Kailey Ryan for Borderless Magazine After he entered the U.S. to seek asylum, a Chicago immigration judge’s decision is turning Alejandro’s life upside down.
On April 6, 2026, Alejandro*, a Venezuelan national, went before Chicago immigration court judge Michelle Venci for an asylum hearing. The hearing began with Judge Venci informing Alejandro that the government was seeking a third-country removal to Ecuador under an Asylum Cooperative Agreement, which allows the Department of Homeland Security to remove asylum seekers to countries with which the United States government has bilateral agreements.
Whether respondents are incarcerated or released after they are deported to a third country is unclear, according to Elizabeth Gibson, Managing Attorney for Capacity Building at the National Immigrant Justice Center.
A crisis began in Venezuela around 2013 after long-time president Hugo Chávez died and his vice president, Nicolás Maduro, took over following an election.
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Alejandro entered the U.S. legally using the CBP One app during the Biden administration, he said. In the turbulent and highly emotional asylum hearing on April 6, he recounted being separated from his family and facing economic struggles and violence in Venezuela and Ecuador. The hearing ended with Judge Venci ordering a third-country deportation to Ecuador, and informing him that he has 30 days to appeal the decision.
Alejandro, who supports his family in Venezuela, has begun the appeal process. But he is facing an uphill battle. Thirteen of the 15 members of the Board of Immigration Appeals were appointed by President Donald Trump, and the Trump administration has pushed measures to undermine immigrants’ ability to successfully appeal to the board.
Alejandro talked with Borderless about his story.
My story is like that of any Venezuelan; there are 32 million of us, and I’m one of those who emigrated when the crisis began.
When Maduro won the 2013 election, people were discontented. We started to protest; people took to the streets. Venezuela spiraled out of the government’s control because people were no longer afraid. People were protesting, exercising their right to vote. They sent the National Guard to repress the people. The government arrested some people who protested or who went out to march. They killed or disappeared others.
There was no food; literal starvation. My family and I went hungry. We would eat only once a day. If you had enough for lunch, there wasn’t enough for dinner; you had to go to bed at 6 p.m. so your stomach wouldn’t wake you up with hunger pangs. But our stomachs sounded like they had lions in there. My salary wasn’t enough because there was a war between the opposition and the government. The government leaders were driving around in fancy cars, living well, while the poor people were always getting poorer. That’s when the immigration started.
No one in any country wants to leave their home, family, or studies to come to another country. No one wants to be hiding, unable to get a job because they don’t have papers.
Many Venezuelans decided to leave and go to Colombia. I arrived in 2014, worked there for a while, before returning to Venezuela. Things got worse; there was "Operation Tun Tun” (Knock Knock), which was a crackdown by state authorities on opponents of Maduro’s regime. The military would show up at your doorstep, they would drag you out in front of your children, throw you in jail, and torture you. They formed a group called the Motorized Force, which was full of thugs. They would ride their motorcycles through the mud, and when the students came out to protest on Bolívar Avenue and in Isabelica, they would show their guns to intimidate the students. They tried to silence, to oppress, the voice of the people.
Many of us left by whatever means possible. We grabbed a small bag and a couple of rags, stuffed them into a pocket, and headed for the Colombian border. I was in different parts of Colombia: Cúcuta, Barranquilla and Cali. I was there with the mother of my children, and we were working.
We worked whatever job we could find: I sold candy on buses and at traffic lights. I cleaned windshields. I even danced on the street.
In that migration, all kinds of people emigrated—doctors, lawyers, construction workers. But the gangs infiltrated the migrants, and because of them, we paid consequences.
I learned to make crafts while I was on the street. I made bracelets and a type of doll, a skill a friend from Colombia taught me. There were some bad people who wanted to collect the money we earned working on the streets. There was a fight, and we had to leave.
We hitched rides, when the trucks slowed down on speed bumps, we jumped onto the back. That’s how I got to the Ecuadorian border, hanging there day and night, rain and sun falling on us. We’d get on what’s called a “mule” in Colombia. You’d go inside the truck, and there were more immigrants, women with children. When we were on the road and stopped for gas, the locals gave us water and oranges and helped us. People threw food onto the truck, and we ate.
‘Don’t Worry, I’ll Return’
My family eventually joined me in Ecuador, where I worked for some time, but we struggled to make ends meet. I heard about the opportunity for Venezuelans to migrate to the U.S. using the CBP One app, and I had to make a difficult decision about whether to bring my children on a dangerous journey.
I said goodbye to my children in Tulcán, Ecuador. They went home to Venezuela on a bus. Saying goodbye to my family was hard; they started crying.
I told the mother of my children, “Don’t worry, I’ll return.” She was six months pregnant, and she couldn’t make the trip to the United States, so I told her to go back home to Venezuela, and we split what money we had saved.
To get to the United States, I returned to Colombia and started into the jungle. Do you know what’s beautiful about what I came here to do, despite all this? The people I met, the ones helping the children.
We made human chains to get the children across the rivers so they wouldn’t drown. It’s beautiful to see how people are trying to survive, because it’s a constant struggle between life and death.
The first person I saw die in the jungle was a man. We were crossing between two mountains, and a river was flowing below. We were all crossing, chained together, holding on by a rope.
I saw a Venezuelan man holding onto a ledge below. He was on the verge of death, and he was trying to save himself by holding on. I was desperate because I was saying, “He’s going to die, let’s all help him.”
But we were all up above, and we couldn’t get to him, or we’d die. He let go, and we all screamed.
I said, “He has a family, he came here for his family. How are they going to find out he died here if there’s not even a cell phone signal?”
We wanted to bury him, but the people in our group kept saying, “Leave him, he’s already dead.”
We kept going. Walking through the jungle, I saw many bodies with stones placed on them.
The jungle has three paths: the path of those with money, the path of those with a little money, and the path of those with no money.
I came to a place where I saw a small tent. When we opened the tent, the dad, mom, son and daughter were all dead. When we got to Panama, the people ahead of us told us what happened.
They said the mother, father and daughter went out to build a bonfire at night, while the boy stayed inside. A snake came in and bit the boy, and he died. When the father and mother saw this, they poured themselves creosote as if they were making coffee and drank it, and they poisoned themselves. The father was lying down, hugging the boy, and the mother was sitting with the daughter. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
There was a roadblock of armed men deep in the Panamanian jungle. They robbed us, they took all our money, and they raped the women. In one of those incidents, a man was with his wife. They were going to rape her, and he tried to defend her. They killed him and his wife. The man’s mother was left alone.
There was a man I met who’d gone crazy. He was with his family when they crossed the river, and it swelled. When he finally made it across, his wife, son and father were swept away. He was shirtless on the riverbank, waiting for his family to come back.
We saw him wandering around the camp. It really hurt me to see him. Every time a group came by, he looked for his family. He believed the river would bring his family back to him.
After Panama, I arrived in Costa Rica, and I started working unloading trucks. I saved up some money because the people in the jungle had robbed us.
I eventually got to Mexico. It was worse than going through the jungle. I was kidnapped for eight days. See this scar on my face? They blindfolded me, and I was handcuffed. They sent a video to my family, and released me after my family paid a ransom.
I got to Mexico City and met some other Venezuelans there. We became friends. We got an immigration appointment through the CBP One app, and the U.S. government approved it. My appointment was for March 16, 2023. I entered the United States through El Paso del Norte, Texas.
‘Help Me Find a Job’
I was in Texas for a week, and I sought shelter in a church and prayed. I have no family here. It’s like you cross a border and see this huge country, and you don’t speak English, you don’t know anyone, you have nothing to eat.
There was a kind of shelter within a church, and they gave me lodging and food. Then we got on a bus to get to our destination. I have a friend who’s here in Chicago, and he took me in for two days. From there, I had to go to a shelter.
I wrote a message in English on a piece of cardboard. “I’m not asking for money. Help me find a job.” I went to where the construction sites are and got a job.
I started the process of getting my work permit, and look where I am now. My first immigration court date was Feb. 11, 2026. They told me that Ecuador has an agreement with the United States and that they can deport me to Ecuador.
It took me almost three years to get to this moment. I entered the United States in 2023; it’s 2026 now. But the court is going to take everything away from me in just one month.
All human beings, young people like us, have dreams, goals, and life projects, right? If one day I saw my country liberated, I know it would be beautiful, and we would all return. My dream is that one day every tear we Venezuelans have shed in foreign lands will be repaid.
My goal is still the same. I came here to make a little money and send it back to my family. I don’t want to be rich.
I learned with this journey that family is where life begins and love never ends. What good is $1,000 in the drawer if you don’t have your child by your side or your mother to give you a hug? I recently called my mom to tell her I love her and to give her a hug, but I couldn’t feel her warmth.
It’s very difficult to save up to buy a business in South America. What I want most is to start a business so my family can live off it.
I am not Ecuadorian, I am from Venezuela. I believe that it’s unfair how the court is sending me to a country where I’m not from, which should be illegal. Do you think that as a man, I wasn’t ashamed to cry in front of the immigration court judge? But as a father, it hurts because she doesn’t know everything I’ve been through to get here. I can’t go back to Venezuela, not until that government is gone.
I feel demoralized and sad, because it’s like you want to run, and they cut off your feet. We want to work, but they are cutting off our paths; they’re not giving us the chance to reach our goals. I want to reach my goals, and when they come at me with the axe, I’m going to put on metal feet.
This story was produced as part of a collaboration between the Medill Investigative Lab-Chicago y Borderless Magazine.
Este historia se ha realizado siguiendo el método colaborativo de Borderless Magazine. Para saber cómo creamos historias como ésta, consulta nuestra explicación visual.
*Name has been changed for privacy and protection.
