A pair of charter aircraft deposited 352 Venezuelan nationals at the General José Antonio Anzoátegui International Airport in Barcelona, Venezuela on the final day of September, logging entries 174 and 175 in the growing official tally of U.S. repatriation flights that have been operating under the bilateral program relaunched in early 2025.
That twin-flight operation on September 30 carries an unmistakable signal from Washington: the drive to systematically remove Venezuelan migrants from U.S. soil is not decelerating — it is gaining momentum, even as communities in South Florida and Texas say federal enforcement has fundamentally disrupted the texture of daily life.
Two Planes, One Day, 352 Lives Upended
When the flights touched down in Barcelona, Venezuelan personnel activated standard intake procedures — identity confirmation carried out by the civil registry agency SAIME, followed by health screening of all passengers, according to NTN24. The Anzoátegui airport has served as the primary hub for U.S. deportation arrivals since the catastrophic June 24, 2026 earthquakes severely damaged Simón Bolívar International Airport near Caracas. Although the damaged airport partially reopened to commercial traffic on September 1 — using a temporary structure erected in its parking lot — deportation flights have continued routing through Barcelona rather than returning to the capital region.
The earthquakes brought removals to a temporary halt. ICE Flight Monitor data shows no deportation flights reached Venezuelan soil between June 24 — the date a removal plane carrying 146 people, including 7 children, landed just hours before the back-to-back 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes struck — and early August, when operations quietly resumed. The fate of those passengers, who were transferred to a detention facility run by Venezuelan intelligence services in the coastal zone hardest hit by the disaster, has never been publicly confirmed.
The Machinery Behind the Flights
The volume of people being removed is difficult to overstate. In May 2026 alone, before the earthquake interruption, ICE removed 1,746 Venezuelans in a single calendar month. The broader removal operation, revived in early 2025 as part of a formal bilateral migration arrangement, accelerated sharply after U.S. forces seized Maduro in Caracas in January 2026. Under the terms negotiated with Rodríguez's caretaker administration, Venezuela committed to receiving up to three ICE flights weekly.
The legal architecture enabling these removals was constructed in stages. The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to terminate Temporary Protected Status for roughly 300,000 Venezuelans who had been shielded by humanitarian relief provisions — ending a protection that had made them legally untouchable for deportation. With that safeguard removed, hundreds of thousands became immediately eligible for removal proceedings.
'Doralzuela' Goes Quiet
The human cost of this campaign has rarely been more visible than in Doral, Florida, a Miami-Dade municipality where about 40 percent of its roughly 81,000 residents trace their roots to Venezuela — a concentration dense enough to earn the city the nickname "Doralzuela." As ICE enforcement surged through September 2026, the city began to hollow out in ways that residents describe as unprecedented.
Adelys Ferro, executive director of the Venezuelan American Caucus, said in an interview that storefronts stood empty and residents had stopped venturing outside. "Doral is a ghost town," she said. "Businesses are starting to close — others are thinking about closing because they are literally empty and cannot sustain themselves. People have terror going out of their homes." A city council member prepared a formal written report and transmitted it directly to members of Congress in September, documenting Venezuelans who had been detained despite holding no criminal record and maintaining active asylum claims.
The Doral city government has acknowledged widespread anxiety in its neighborhoods while maintaining that it holds no operational authority over federal ICE activity. The city approved a 287(g) agreement in April 2025 — a federal program that authorizes local officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement duties — though elected officials have insisted that Doral police are not directing the federal raids. The mayor has further acknowledged that the city receives no official count of how many residents ICE has detained within city limits.
What Awaits Those Who Land
For those returning to Venezuela on flights 174 and 175, the country they are arriving in bears little resemblance to the one many fled. The United Nations estimates that approximately 5.1 million Venezuelans face hunger, and more than half the population lives in extreme poverty. The June 2026 earthquakes added a catastrophic additional burden: the United Nations Development Programme placed the economic damage at the equivalent of 6 percent of Venezuela's gross domestic product — a blow that landed on a country already weakened by more than a decade of economic contraction, political repression, and shortages of medicine, fuel, and basic goods.
With flights 174 and 175 now logged, the removal program shows no sign of deceleration. Three hundred and fifty-two more Venezuelans set foot on home soil on September 30. Based on the established weekly cadence, hundreds more will likely follow before the month has barely begun.
