By Brian Ng, Communications Coordinator and Home Team Coach
It was a Friday evening in Acarigua, Venezuela, and Juan's wife called and told him not to come home. Not because she was mad at him, but because there was a van from the Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar (DGCIM) sitting outside their house. The DGCIM is the intelligence arm of the Nicolás Maduro's regime. They were waiting there to take Juan away. Either to prison, as they had already done once before, or maybe this time to whatever place the regime takes people they never want to hear from again. To wherever it is you can make people disappear forever.
Thanks to his wife's warning and a sympathetic neighbor who let him hide, Juan remained safe. But that isn't the case for so many of his colleagues and countryman who have been thrown in prison or killed for speaking out against Maduro and his henchman. But who is Juan, why does Maduro want him silenced, and what exactly is going on in Venezuela?
The current situation in Venezuela is complicated. Over the last nine years it's estimated that more than seven million Venezuelans have fled their country as refugees. Soaring inflation, a lack of affordable food, massive unemployment, and increasing violence in the streets by gangs and government-sanctioned groups are just a handful of the causes behind this mass exodus. But at the root of it all is a corrupt and dictatorial government, led by Maduro, who took power in 2013.
A series of ill-conceived policy decisions by Maduro and his political allies has since brought Venezuela's economy to its knees. Critics of the Maduro regime have been thrown in jail or outright killed. Marches and protests in the streets are met with violence from the government. And while Venezuela's neighboring countries have for the most part done their best to welcome the millions of Venezuelans fleeing poverty, famine, and violence, the rest of the world has largely remained indifferent.
Juan is a professor of history and a political activist, a husband and a father. When he spoke out against the corruption he saw being committed by a well-connected official at the university where he worked, Juan was thrown in jail and tortured before eventually being released. Since then, he and his family have been threatened, put under surveillance, and their home has been tagged by the government. Juan knows that if he doesn't get out of Venezuela soon, he and his family will never be safe as long as Maduro is in power.
In October of 2022, the United States government announced the Process for Venezuelans, a program that gives a pathway for Venezuelans to legally enter and find safe haven in the U.S for two years under what is called Humanitarian Parole status. It is very similar to the Uniting for Ukraine program under which HFR has been welcoming Ukrainian families since last April.
As soon as he heard about the Process for Venezuelans, Juan began to reach out to every organization he could find that might be able to help. Of the more than 50 places he tried to contact, Juan told us that we were the only group that replied back. Home for Refugees is currently in the process of getting Juan and his family safely to the United States. Sponsors for the family have stepped up, and the applications are being processed. If everything goes according to plan, Juan and his family will soon arrive in the U.S. as the first Venezuelan family to officially be welcomed and resettled by HFR.
*Names changed for security reasons.