Lawmaker says ICE moved detained children toward Venezuela deportation as earthquakes killed thousands
Rep. Castro says removals continued into country in crisis, and calls for family detention camp at Fort Bliss to close
HOUSTON (MNTV) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement moved detained migrant families toward deportation to Venezuela in the hours after earthquakes killed nearly 2,000 people there, Rep. Joaquin Castro of Texas said, describing operations that swept up children and families with no criminal records.
Castro said ICE began deportation-related transfers from a Texas detention facility soon after the disaster, moving detainees in the early morning through multiple sites before returning them — all while keeping them under active threat of removal.
He said further deportations were carried out in the hours before the quakes struck, sending people back into a country already collapsing into crisis.
Castro called for an immediate halt to all deportations to Venezuela and for the closure of Camp East Montana, the family detention site at Fort Bliss that he has previously visited.
He described it as a large-scale facility run by private contractors and dogged by repeated complaints over conditions and oversight.
The American Civil Liberties Union has called the site a serious civil rights concern and backed litigation over detention conditions there. Separate lawsuits from legal organizations allege inadequate medical care and systemic violations of detainees’ rights.
Deporting families into an active disaster zone runs against basic humanitarian and international-protection standards — a point Castro pressed in warning that history will judge these removals as human rights violations.
Former internees of America’s wartime detention camps have drawn the same comparison, likening the mass confinement of families to earlier chapters of unjust incarceration in the United States.
Advocacy groups have renewed demands that Washington ease sanctions on Venezuela, arguing that years of economic restrictions have deepened the very humanitarian collapse now endangering deportees.
U.S. sanctions remain in place, with narrow carve-outs for some commercial activity, and have done little to improve conditions for ordinary Venezuelans.
ICE had not responded publicly to Castro’s account at the time of reporting.
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