Daniel Núñez called his mother thirty minutes before the earthquake hit. He had just landed in Caracas, deported after almost five years working construction in Jacksonville, Florida. In four minutes he told her they were going to live in Venezuela together, that they were going to keep going. Then the call ended. Oswadeliz Núñez has not heard from her son since.

On June 24, the United States deported 146 Venezuelans on a single flight from Texas to Caracas. Nineteen women. Seven children. They were taken to the Hotel Santuario La Llanada in La Guaira, the coastal state housing Venezuela's main airport, to be processed. At 6:04pm local time, a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck. Thirty-nine seconds later, a 7.5 followed, the strongest Venezuela has felt since 1900. The hotel collapsed. The deportees were inside it.

Anderson Salcedo Lozano, twenty-two, lost both legs when the building came down on him. Angelo Mejía Meléndez, twenty-seven, died in the rubble; his mother identified his body by a pizza tattoo on his arm. Víctor Guanipa Toyo, thirty-two, remains missing nearly a week later. His brother searches hospitals, shelters and morgues. The death toll has passed 1,900 across Venezuela. Tens of thousands remain unaccounted for.

Asked about the flight, a DHS spokesperson said it 'safely reached Venezuela' and that all 146 people aboard 'had been returned home.' Once an individual is no longer in ICE custody, the spokesperson explained, ICE is no longer responsible for them. The sentence is accurate as a description of jurisdiction. It says nothing about what jurisdiction is for.

These were not random deportees caught in a random disaster. They were detained, transported and delivered to a specific hotel on a coastline that geological history had marked as vulnerable to exactly this kind of event for more than a century. Daniel Núñez's only infractions were crossing the border without authorisation and a misdemeanour for driving without a licence. He was arrested on his way to work in May. Asked whether deportations to Venezuela would continue, DHS did not respond.

Oswadeliz Núñez put it plainly. 'Venezuelans are not animals. They are humans, not criminals. My son paid taxes.' She is still waiting for his body.

Responsibility, in Washington's accounting, ended the moment the aircraft doors opened. Nine hours later, the hotel meant to process the people inside it fell on top of them.