After 4 years in the U S. building a new and successful life for himself, Johan was deported back to Venezuela. Upon arrival he was inprisoned and repeatedly beaten by the Venezuelan guards.

After a month he was released, his face and body swollen with painful bruises. He is still being watched and monitored by the Venezuelan government

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"I am in a desperate and unbearable situation," he said when he reached out to me a few days ago.

Johan still has a valid Venezuelan passport and so he still has hope. He wants to go to Spain where policies toward immigrants have been more welcoming.

But he doesn't have any money. He needs money for plane tickets and he needs money for initial living expenses once he arrives in Spain.

I met Johan in the autumn of 2023 while he was living in a tent outside a South Side Chicago police station. It was at the height of migrant arrivals in Chicago, as many as 10 bus loads arriving every day from Texas. There was not nearly enough shelter space to house them.

Johan had already been in the U. S. for about a year, having first gone to California where he worked as an Uber driver. Like many thousands of others, he had fled political violence and government repression in Venezuela, fearing for his life. I was a volunteer at the station, part of a grassroots effort by community members to provide the migrants with food, clothing and other basic needs.

I brought him cough medicine one chilly October night. But I didn't get to know him well until a few months later when he and two Venezuelan friends from the station were settled into an apartment which I and other volunteers helped them furnish. In gratitude they invited me and several other volunteers for a festive dinner one cold and snowy January afternoon.

Johan seemed happy in Chicago, though I was also aware that his life there was a constant struggle, in and out of one minimum wage "sweatshop-like" job after the other.

After about a year he moved to Miami, where he started a remodeling/ repair business that enabled him to showcase amazing talents. There wasn't anything he couldn't do: from flooring, furniture assembling and hottub restoration to turning a neglected home into a sparkling jewel inside and out.

For a long time he lived legally in the U.S. under TPS, Temporary Protected Sratus. But that program ended for Venezuelans in November 2025, jeopardizing the immigration status of some 600,000 Venezuelans.

That paved the way for the thing he had hoped and prayed would never happen... But it happened: He was stopped on the street by ICE.

Please help Johan escape the terror he now faces in Venezuela. Please help him start a new life in Spain.