Fear grips Utah’s Venezuelans as Trump orders rollback of protections

Thayderson Jaimes isn’t sleeping well. He can’t eat. He goes to work in fear.

He’s nervous, he says in Spanish, “very, very nervous.”

Jaimes, 21, arrived in Utah in June 2023 under then-President Joe Biden’s initiative to offer temporary refuge to Venezuelans fleeing precarious political and economic conditions. He’s one of an estimated 10,000 Venezuelan Utahns, many of whom fled the South American country in search of greater stability.

Now, even though he’s in the process of applying for asylum, he’s worried for his future in the U.S. as President Donald Trump launches his second term in the White House.

Since returning to office, Trump and his administration have issued a trio of orders dismantling Temporary Protected Status, a program created by Congress in 1990 that allows presidents to grant temporary refuge to those from nations in crisis. It’s the program that aided Venezuelan migration to the U.S. under the Biden administration, and its revocation would leave at least 300,000 people from the country vulnerable to deportation.

Because he is seeking asylum, Jaimes does not face immediate danger of deportation, but the president’s orders have left him with a sense of unease.

He came here after getting arrested, beaten up and threatened by Venezuelan police at a student protest. He fears for his and his family’s safety if he gets sent back to his native country.

“If I go back to Venezuela, I could be imprisoned, arrested or killed,” he said. “So, that is my great fear of returning to Venezuela, that they will take my life and that they will hurt my family.”

Mayra Molina, the executive director of the Venezuelan Alliance of Utah, estimates 65% to 70% of her compatriots currently residing in the Beehive State are protected under the temporary refuge initiative.

While fear and uncertainty swirl among Utahns who are here with Temporary Protected Status, community leaders, like Molina, are trying to provide emergency assistance, educate Utahns about the challenges immigrants face and advocate for changes to the nation’s system for handling new arrivals.

Daily fear

Molina, who is now a U.S. citizen, said the first big wave of Venezuelan immigrants to Utah arrived around 2017. That group contained more professionals and more of those who had some connection to the state already.

In the past five years, though, Molina said that’s changed. Arrivals have been more working class with little knowledge of Utah.

The Trump administration’s policies, she said, are already affecting how Utah’s immigrants are going about their daily lives.

“At this moment, we have families that are not sending their kids to school,” Molina said. “We have families that don’t want to go to buy groceries. … They don’t want to go, especially [to] those Latino supermarkets. They don’t want to even get close to those. They don’t want to go out.”

Jose “Chelin” Guevara, who runs the education and mental health nonprofit Foundation Capitán Zarigüeya, echoed Molina’s observation, saying Trump’s immigration policies have damaged the mental health of young Venezuelans living here.

“It scares us. Our community is very afraid and consequently our children, because our children do not escape from what is happening in Venezuela [nor] from what is happening in the United States,” Guevara, a former high school teacher in Venezuela, said during an interview in Spanish. “Seeing their parents worried is something that generates uncertainty, that generates worry, that generates fear, and, in many cases, they see how their parents or relatives have been deported, and they are left here in a somewhat worrying situation.”

He added that kids have told him that they’re ashamed to be Venezuelan and don’t want to learn anything about the country.

A spokesperson for Jordan School District, which has seen a major increase in Venezuelan students in recent years, said it is “too early to see any kind of broad impact in our schools” from the federal policy changes.

Guevara and fellow nonprofit leader Antonio Valbuena, who oversees the Bridges 21 Initiative, said some community members fear going to doctor visits, while others are afraid to worship at church.

Advocating for the future

In response to the fallout from the nation’s new immigration policies, Molina’s alliance has sent letters to the White House requesting the reinstatement of Temporary Protected Status. The organization has also worked with other groups to provide emergency legal help and distribute business cards with advice about what to do during encounters with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In the long term, Molina wants the federal government to streamline its asylum process and immigration system more broadly so those fleeing instability and persecution don’t have to live without permanent status for years. She, similar to Guevara and Valbuena, also wants to educate newcomers and lifelong citizens about the immigration process and American culture.

When he’s not working his usual job sorting packages at a Salt Lake City Amazon warehouse, Valbuena spends his time lobbying at the Utah Capitol on behalf of his nonprofit in hopes of better integrating Latino immigrants into the Beehive State.

Before coming to the U.S. six years ago, Valbuena was a lawyer in Venezuela. Now, he’s in the process of gaining asylum after fleeing his native country to escape persecution from the government, which seized his family’s farm.

While Valbuena is not in Utah under Temporary Protected Status, he fears the shift in federal policy will have a ripple effect that could impact all Venezuelan immigrants, including himself.

Valbuena’s goal is to help Venezuelans and other immigrants get more involved at all levels of American government.

He believes creating relationships between Utah elected officials and immigrant communities can help each group better understand the other during a time of intense federal scrutiny.

The stakes are too high, he said, to sit on the sidelines.

“We lost a country by not participating,” he said. “I am 57 years old. I don’t have time to start over.”