Venezuelan Deportees Were Sent To a Hotel When Returned To Their Country. Then The Earthquakes Hit.

Dozens of Venezuelans who were deported on June 24 were killed when successive earthquakes hit the country just hours after they landed.

146 Venezuelans, including 19 women and seven children, had just arrived in the country, CNN reported.

While the deportees were still being processed at the Hotel Santuario La Llanada, twin earthquakes measuring 7.2 and 7.5 in the Richter scale struck the country. At least 25 deportees were killed, while many others are still missing. The critical 72 hour window to find survivors has already passed.

Enit Hernández told NBC News her husband, José Rafael Rossi Ydrogo, is one of the missing people.

“On Tuesday he called me and said they told him to gather his belongings because he was leaving the next day. That was the last time I ever heard from him,” Hernández, who lives in Texas, told the outlet. “My entire life changed in just one day. There was no need for him to go through all of this. I’m here alone with my daughter now. It’s not easy.”

The Department of Homeland Security told NBC News that the flight “safely reached Venezuela.”

“When an individual is no longer in ICE custody, ICE is no longer responsible for them,” the spokesperson said.

The Associated Press reported that Lisbeth Portillo, 58, who was on the flight, was able to survive the disaster. She managed to escape the collapsing hotel with about 20 other deportees.

“We walked about five kilometers, and I cried and cried … there was no communication,” Portillo told the AP in a phone interview from her home in Maracaibo, Venezuela.

Portillo said that she had been placed in a second-floor room of the hotel along with 16 other women when she felt the building begin shaking.

“I started hearing ‘papa, papa,’ and I saw the women next to me start to fall. They were all screaming for help,” she told the AP. “I fall and end up buried and covered by a beam, but the shaking shifted everything where I was buried and I was able to get out.”

Over 1,700 people have been confirmed dead as a result of the earthquakes, but the figure could end up being much higher as tens of thousands continue unaccounted for. More than 5,000 people have been injured and almost 16,000 have been displaced. Search and rescue operations continue in the country as teams from different countries across the world arrive in Venezuela to help. The interim government has been criticized for the lack of heavy machinery to remove debris.