SAN JUAN — María had been held at gunpoint four times in Venezuela before she came to Puerto Rico nine years ago. On one occasion, her whole family was forced to hand over their belongings with guns to their heads, she explained.

She has been in the archipelago with special legal permission since 2021. 

María has Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which allows migrants from specific countries experiencing a crisis to live and work in the United States legally. Two hundred thousand Venezuelans were granted TPS in 2021 and 350,000 in 2023. As of September 2024, approximately 1.1 million people held TPS in the country. However, the Department of Homeland Security has cancelled it for many people, including most of the Venezuelans who received it in 2023.

Even though María received TPS in 2021, a clerical error from United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) led to her work permit expiring in April, her lawyer, Mariela Negrón, said. María will likely be fired because she currently has no way to change her status.

Once her TPS ends, María has few options: return to Venezuela, stay in Puerto Rico without a regularized migration status, find a job that’s willing to sponsor a work visa, or apply for political asylum. None of the options are easy, and the processes required for the last two are much harder to do under the Trump administration.

“It’s like living with a shadow hanging over me, one that constantly reminds me that my stay here isn’t guaranteed. Sometimes I feel like I’m on hold, waiting for an answer that never comes, and it consumes me,” she said over email, which was the only way she felt safe communicating.

Having seen the continued immigration enforcement happening throughout Puerto Rico and the United States, she’s afraid of being detained even though she has permission to stay for now. Lawyers told The Guardian that U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained Venezuelan TPS holders even though the law says they should not. 

“I have had moments where I prefer not to go out, especially when there’s news of raids or increased immigration controls. Even though I try to live my life normally, the feeling of vulnerability is constant,” María wrote. 

Nearly 8 million people have fled Venezuela because of the ongoing crisis caused by the government using its power to imprison and intimidate dissent. This political unrest, combined with hyperinflation, mass unemployment, and U.S. sanctions, has led to a widespread shortage of basic goods and services, including food and electricity. The Biden administration granted TPS to the undocumented Venezuelans who fled to the U.S. as a result of this instability.

Neither Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), which has led immigration enforcement on the archipelago, nor U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) responded to questions about whether TPS holders have been detained in Puerto Rico.

Once considered a safe haven for undocumented migrants, the Trump administration’s immigration policies have turned Puerto Rico into yet another place where migrants live in fear of being deported.

The illusion was broken during an immigration raid in late January, shortly after the Republican governor, Jenniffer González Colón, told Dominicans, who make up the largest share of migrants, that they would not be a target for immigration enforcement. More than 560 of the approximately 20,000 undocumented people living in Puerto Rico have been detained so far.

During a recent interview with NPR, the local head of HSI revealed she had received the information on the 6,000 migrants who possess a driver’s license under a law from the Puerto Rican government. Critics have accused the state government of hiding its collaboration with the federal government’s immigration policies, as the administrative request from HSI was received in January, but the public did not learn about the information sharing until early June.

A recent immigration raid ended with one migrant detained and a Puerto Rican worker momentarily detained until he proved he was a citizen. A similar raid on a construction site led to the death of Antonio Báez Ortega, an undocumented Dominican man, who jumped from 30 feet while trying to escape an immigration raid. Juan Alexis Tineo Martínez, another undocumented Dominican man, died in February in San Juan hospital while under ICE custody.

Puerto Rico’s only permanent immigrant detention center was closed in 2013. Migrants are kept in several transitory detention centers before they are moved to one in the United States, typically either in Florida or Texas, lawyers and experts said. Detained migrants are held at either detention centers at ICE or CBP’s offices, or a federal center operated by the Government Services Administration (GSA), nicknamed “la neverita” (the icebox). 

Antonio, a Dominican migrant held in ICE’s transitory detention center, said the cell where he was held had enough space because several people had just been moved. However, by the end of his four-day detainment, he explained he was packed in there with about 15 people “one on top of the other,” even though there were empty cells. 

“You barely get any water. [You’re] handcuffed everywhere you go like a delinquent. The treatment was very bad. The food was shit. Many Dominicans were getting sick, getting stomach aches, or headaches. I left today, and I would have given a million dollars to leave,” he told The Latino Newsletter mere hours after he was released.

The Latino Newsletter spoke with another migrant, David, who said he received appropriate food and water while he was detained in the transitory detention center at ICE’s offices and “la neverita.” He said he “missed the treatment” he received in Puerto Rico compared to his stay in detention centers in the U.S., where he says he was “abused.”

Both men are married to U.S. citizens and were in the process of regularizing their migration status when they were detained by federal immigration enforcement. Antonio has multiple children who are U.S. citizens as well and came to Puerto Rico to be able to “sustain” his family back home, he explained. Meanwhile, David has lived on the archipelago for nearly 24 years and routinely sends money to his mother to pay for her medical bills, he said. 

ICE/HSI did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the state of the transitory detention centers in Puerto Rico. CBP deferred all questions to ICE.

Negrón, who typically deals with migrants detained in Puerto Rico’s western region, said she has never had a meeting with a client inside one of these detention centers. Immigration officials have told her they do not have the necessary facilities for meetings like that, she explained. Lawyers have been able to visit migrants detained at ICE’s offices “briefly,” another immigration lawyer, Rosaura González Rucci, added separately. However, Negrón says that some family and friends of detained migrants have been able to bring them their passports. 

“There’s no access to legal representation because the agency does not provide communication with the detained or with lawyers,” Negrón said.

Because migrants are moved fairly quickly after they are detained, it makes it harder to get in contact with their families or secure legal representation, several lawyers and immigration experts told The Latino Newsletter. Being without their support system could mean that many feel pressure to sign the documents necessary to self-deport while in detention, some believed. 

Lawyers and families often do not know where migrants are held once they are detained, until days later, Negrón explained. The ICE locator tool, which allows individuals to look up whether a migrant is detained and their current location, has been reported to take a long time to update, with several people complaining. However, some are able to make a call within a day of being processed in a U.S. detention center. 

González Rucci, whose father was a Mexican immigrant, said that she has had clients move out of Puerto Rico within a day of their court date. This leads to a judge having to dismiss the case because they have no jurisdiction over a person outside the archipelago, she explained. 

“They do it out of malice,” she said from her office near Barrio Obrero, a historically Dominican community where there have been several immigration raids.

David was scheduled for a Wednesday hearing, but was moved to Miami’s Krome Detention Center on Tuesday. To him, it doesn’t make any sense to be moved from one place to another when he already had a scheduled court date.

One of González Rucci’s clients, a Canadian man detained at the airport while returning to the U.S. from vacation in Puerto Rico, was flown to Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach just two hours before his scheduled hearing. The conditions at the facility —previously described as “inhumane” by a South Florida representative— led to complications with an allergy that required surgery on his face, González Rucci explained. During that time, neither she nor his wife knew where he was. 

Marie Ange Blaise, a Haitian immigrant, died in ICE custody at Broward in April. 

Recent aerial photos from Krome show migrants using their bodies to spell out “SOS.” The facility, which is run by ICE, has been the subject of several allegations of inhumane conditions and an investigation by the Department of Justice in 2000 because of accusations of sexual abuse. Two migrants, Maksym Chernyak from Ukraine and Genry Ruiz Guillén from Honduras, have died inside the facility this year. 

Separately, David and Miguel, both Dominican migrants who are clients of González Rucci, described similar experiences within Krome. 

“They treat you as if you were an animal,” said David. He described living mostly on bread, with 40 or 50 people packed into one cell meant for far fewer. After some days there, he was shipped to a detention center in California, handcuffed all the way there. 

Meanwhile, Miguel described being held handcuffed without food or a bathroom for 15 hours while on the bus that pinballed between Miami and Mississippi while they found a center with enough space. Once ICE finally decided on processing him at Krome —where he spent about a month— Miguel was one person among nearly 130 crammed into a room meant for less than 50. He described spending nearly a week without showering, being shuffled between cells inside the facility without much food, and sleeping on a cold floor before he was given a thin mattress. Much like other formerly detained migrants interviewed for this story, he was in the process of regularizing his immigration status. 

González Rucci’s Canadian client had already filed the necessary documents to change his migration status when he was detained. She has represented others in similar situations.

Another client who had a work permit was deported to the Dominican Republic even though she had filed the paperwork to regularize her migration status. González Rucci explained that cases where an undocumented migrant filed to become a permanent resident were typically dropped because judges understood that the person was on a pathway to citizenship, even if they were undocumented.

That’s not happening anymore, she explained. Now, even if you have submitted the necessary paperwork to regularize your migration status, you’re still a target for immigration enforcement, she said.

“Anybody who could be a legal resident is being denied rights, and it is happening with everybody,” González Rucci said.

Separately, both González Rucci and Negrón said that all their undocumented clients who show up to immigration court are being forced to report to ICE headquarters, which is in the same building, so they can be outfitted with an ankle monitor. If a person loses their immigration case, the device allows federal agents to locate and detain them quickly, even though that’s not supposed to happen until they have exhausted every legal remedy, Negrón explained. 

Neither could say what legal justification ICE was using for this move. 

“The reality is that we have seen the administrative agencies do whatever they want. Really, there’s no other way to say it, and they have abused the exercise of power they have,” Negrón said.

An elderly Dominican woman who González Rucci represents was fitted for an ankle monitor after visiting immigration court. She was “devastated [and] heartbroken,” because she could not show up to church with it on her leg, the lawyer explained. 

González Rucci said that one of her clients, who was requesting asylum, was detained by federal immigration enforcement at immigration court on Tuesday, right after charges against her were dismissed.

María, the Venezuelan woman with TPS, is trying to continue living her life while taking the necessary precautions to avoid any unnecessary encounters with immigration enforcement.

After so many years outside of her home country, going back would not be like returning home, she explained. Instead, it would be like arriving in a country she no longer recognizes. Due to the economic crisis, she would not be able to support herself or continue sending them money, as she does from Puerto Rico. Thinking of losing everything she has built for herself is extremely painful. 

“Being forced to return would not only destroy what I've managed to build here with so much sacrifice, but it would also jeopardize my safety and that of my family,” María said. 

Editor’s Note: The migrants who spoke with The Latino Newsletter for this story were granted anonymity so they could speak freely without fearing for their safety. They are identified by pseudonyms throughout the article.

Carlos Berríos Polanco is a journalist from Puerto Rico who covers climate, conflict, and their intersection.

NYC Mayoral Candidate Released: From CNN, “New York City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander was released from federal custody Tuesday afternoon, hours after he was arrested by officers at immigration court in Manhattan after he tried to escort a migrant whom officers were attempting to arrest.”

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