As anti-government protests convulsed Venezuela in 2017, a handful of local mayors opposed to the autocratic government of President Nicolás Maduro were sentenced to 15 months in prison for not squelching the demonstrations.

One of them, Carlos Roberto García, the slender, boyish-looking mayor of Mérida, a city in the Andes of western Venezuela, fled to Colombia before migrating with his family to the United States, where he has been claiming asylum since 2022.

Forced into exile, the former politician rebuilt his life, trudging through snow-covered driveways in the Cincinnati suburbs delivering packages for Amazon to support his wife and two children.

But last month, nearly a decade after fleeing Venezuela, García’s life was upended once again. At a routine appointment at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Cincinnati, he was abruptly detained, sent to a county jail and threatened with deportation.

“When he called me from jail, he told me, ‘We never imagined that we would go through everything we went through, fleeing Venezuela so I wasn’t detained, seeking protection, only to be detained in this country,’” said his wife, María Gabriela Duarte, 38.

His family fears that García, 42, will be imprisoned if the Trump administration deports him to Venezuela. Even after the United States captured Maduro on Jan. 3, the country’s government is still led by officials with a history of punishing political opponents.

As his lawyers rush to block his deportation, García has emerged as a notable example of the limbo facing thousands of Venezuelans. President Donald Trump has escalated deportations of Venezuelans — many of whom are seeking asylum and have no criminal record — to a country now under U.S. oversight, but that still retains Maduro’s security apparatus.

In the United States, Trump has revoked Biden-era protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, that shielded more than 600,000 Venezuelans from deportation, moving quickly to expel them even as the revocation is litigated in the courts.

And in Venezuela, the interim government, under pressure from the United States, has begun to take steps to ease decades of political repression. Venezuelan officials have released more than 400 political prisoners, unveiled legislation to grant them amnesty and announced the closure of a notorious prison where, according to human rights groups, many were tortured.

While welcoming the early signs of change, many Venezuelans are wary about their durability.

The quickly shifting landscape has left many Venezuelans facing deportation confronting an urgent question: What kind of country are they being forced to return to?

It remains unclear if the Venezuelan government would move to arrest García if he were deported. Venezuelan government representatives did not return requests for comment.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said García entered the country illegally in 2022 and was “released” into the country by the Biden administration.

The agency said Trump had brought “stability” to Venezuela following Maduro’s removal and that Venezuelans could now “go home to a country that they love.”

Marc Prokosch, García’s lawyer, filed an emergency petition in U.S. District Court in Ohio, asking that ICE be ordered to release García from Butler County Jail, where he has been held since Jan. 23.

The petition said García has no criminal record in the United States, did not pose a danger to society and, “has complied with all legal requirements to apply for asylum in this country.”

A Young Mayor from Mérida

García hails from Mérida, a midsize city in western Venezuela perched on a 5,000-foot-high plateau.

The city is recognized for its well-known university, Universidad de los Andes, where Mr. García met his wife, studied law and got involved in student government.

In 2013, at the age of 30, he was elected Mérida’s mayor as a member of one of the country’s main opposition parties.

His clash with the Maduro regime came to a head in 2017, when hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans flooded the streets after the judicial branch dissolved the opposition-controlled legislature, triggering a constitutional crisis.

The protests, which spread to several cities, including Mérida, erupted into violence. At least 124 protesters were killed and thousands more injured, many by state security forces and pro-government armed groups, according to the United Nations.

As Maduro cracked down, Venezuela’s highest court ordered the arrest of García and four other mayors opposed to the Venezuelan president. They were accused of failing to quell the protests.

García and his wife packed a small suitcase, were picked up by friends in an SUV and headed to Colombia in the dark of night while evading police checkpoints.

“What hurt me is that we fled as if we were criminals,” Duarte said.

The family kept a low profile in Cúcuta, a Colombian city on the border with Venezuela. They started a business selling inflatable playhouses even as they hoped to return to Venezuela if the civil unrest toppled the Maduro regime.

But the couple’s exile in Colombia, where they had two children, Carlota and Carlitos, lasted years.

In 2022, after feeling unsafe in Colombia, the family joined the growing exodus of Venezuelans traveling north to the U.S.-Mexico border. They crossed the border illegally into Texas, filed an asylum application and obtained Temporary Protected Status in 2024, allowing García to legally work and live in the United States.

Exiled in Ohio and Detained by ICE

García and his family made their way to the Cincinnati suburbs, where a small but tight-knit clutch of Venezuelan migrants began laying roots.

García proudly documented his new life on social media, posting about his early morning shifts delivering packages for Amazon and Walmart.

García and his family had applied for asylum and had been regularly checking in at the ICE offices, without any trouble, as their case wound its way through the courts.

But on Jan. 23, when the couple showed up for a check-in, Duarte grew alarmed when she saw two immigrants be detained. A few minutes later, ICE officers ushered García into a room, handcuffed him and whisked him away, his wife said.

“They didn’t tell me anything, they just took him,” said Duarte, who rushed out of the facility, shaken and confused.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Patricia Sulbarán and Isayen Herrera
c.2026 The New York Times Company