Venezuelan family feels force of Trump's crackdown

MERCEDES Yamarte’s three sons fled Venezuela for a better life in the US.

- 

Now one languishes in a Salvadoran jail, another “self-deported” to Mexico and a third lives in hiding - terrified US agents will crash the door at any moment.

At her zinc-roofed home in a poor neighbourhood of the northern city of Maracaibo, 46-year-old Mercedes blinks back tears as she thinks about her family split asunder by US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

“I wish I could go to sleep, wake up, and this never happened,” she said, as rain drummed down and lightning flashed overhead.

In their homeland, her boys were held back by decades of political and economic tumult that have already prompted an estimated eight million Venezuelans to emigrate.

But in leaving, all three brothers became ensnared by politics once more, and by a US president determined to bolt the door of a nation once proud of its migrant roots.

For years, her eldest son, 30-year-old Mervin had lived in America, providing for his wife and six-year-old daughter, working Texas construction sites and at a tortilla factory.

On March 13, he was arrested by US immigration agents and summarily deported to a Salvadoran mega jail, where he is still being held incommunicado.