At Colombia-Venezuela border, vulnerable brace for Trump war

The autocracy in Venezuela has led to millions fleeing Venezuela, crowding border towns in Colombia. With Trump weighing Venezuela strikes, it could soon get a lot worse.

Luis Alfredo Lopez Molina (C), originally from Venezuela, receives health care in the emergency room of the Hospital Erasmo Meoz after seeking medical care for a severe infection on his leg in Cucuta, Colombia. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

CÚCUTA, Colombia – The emergency room of Hospital Erasmo Meoz, just miles from the Colombia-Venezuela border, heaves with patients.

Stretchers squeeze through narrow gaps. Dozens of Venezuelan migrants pack the hallways, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the floors. IV tubing crosses the room, and bandaged feet rest on wheelchair steps, while fans push the humid air — failing to clear the smell of sweat and desperation.

Patients, many Venezuelan migrants, crowd the emergency room of Erasmo Meoz Hospital in Cúcuta, Colombia on Nov. 16. (Video by Abby Pender)

By law, the hospital must treat every patient regardless of immigration status. Most are fleeing hunger, political repression and economic collapse in Venezuela, a crisis that has deepened as President Nicolás Maduro has cemented his authoritarian rule.

Tensions between President Donald Trump and Maduro have escalated sharply in recent months, and the United States has deployed its largest military presence in the Caribbean since the Cuban Missile Crisis. Local officials and migrants fear that any escalation could trigger a humanitarian emergency on a region already stretched to the limit.

Trump claims the military initiative is combating narcotrafficking. Since the operation began in September, at least 76 people have died in extrajudicial killings in South American waters, The Guardian reports. The Trump administration has provided no evidence linking the victims to drug trafficking, and in at least one case the Colombian government claims an innocent fisherman was killed in a boat strike.

Maduro, insisting the U.S. seeks regime change, has countered by swearing in six million civilian militia members.

“I sort of have made up my mind,” Trump said this past weekend, on his Venezuela strategy – without outlining what he plans.

There is a sort of jaded acceptance among those in Cúcuta, which has been no stranger to humanitarian tragedies and violent conflict. For them, Trump’s potential strikes have added a new dimension of danger, but they are long accustomed to a jungle of intertwining risks and violence.

Many have lived in fear of armed groups and narcotrafficking for much of their lives.

“Whether the Colombian government takes action or not, whether the government in Venezuela takes action or not — it makes no difference to us,” Erasmo Meoz Hospital Manager Hernando Gómez said. “Poor people continue to come here so that we can help them.”

---

Since Maduro took power in 2013, economic collapse, hunger and violence have driven nearly 8 million Venezuelans to flee their country, according to Human Rights Watch.

One of them, 29-year-old Nermari, sits in central Cúcuta’s San Antonio Park next to a cart of second-hand clothes and coffee. At her feet, two of her children play — her 2-year-old son with dirt and her 5-year-old daughter with a tricycle — as Nermari pulls them clear of passing foot traffic in the park.

Community members of Cúcuta, including displaced Venezuelans, occupy San Antonio Park in Central Cúcuta on Nov. 16. (Video by Abby Pender)

Nermari’s story is shared by many: she fled Venezuela six years ago, seeking work and better opportunities for her family.

The rest of her family — two older sons and a daughter — live back in San Cristobal, Venezuela, with her mother so they can continue attending school. Nermari, who had her first child at age 15, is defined by this separation.

On her wrist, she wears a plastic beaded bracelet with purple hearts, yellow stars and an “N” that her daughter in Venezuela made for her.

She never takes it off, she said.

Nermari last saw her children on the other side of the border nearly one year ago — it’s too expensive for her to travel back and forth.

“I usually travel back to Venezuela in December, and this year I told my mom I couldn’t go because of money,” she said. “I don’t always like being here; I always travel, but how things are right now, I don’t even have the money I had last year to go back.”

Nermari is especially close with her mother, who raised her and her three sisters after her father was killed in a street fight. The distance is constant, painful, she said.

“I miss her. I would like to be able to help her from here... Sometimes she has food to eat, sometimes she doesn’t,” Nermari said.

Her deepest ambition is simple: for her entire family to live together again in a house of their own in Venezuela — a place where no one can kick them out and the government can’t take their property.

Nermari’s sisters, she said, lost their home when the Maduro government expropriated it.

---

Displaced people from recent clashes between armed groups board canoes to cross the Tarra River, which divides Colombia and Venezuela, in Tibu, Norte de Santander department, Colombia, on January 19, 2025. (Photo by SCHNEYDER MENDOZA/AFP via Getty Images)

About an hour north of Cúcuta lies Tibú, a border town where Venezuelans now make up roughly one-third of the population. Many cross the river illegally to find work in illicit economies, often in mining or planting the coca leaf.

“It has been a very heavy and quite strong burden,” said community leader Jaime Botero. “Because they generate expenses and costs that are not within the government’s budget and within the budget of the municipality.”

Botero said local officials fear that if conflict erupts between the U.S. and Venezuela, Tibú would see a massive wave of displaced people.

“It would be total chaos,” Botero said. “Everyone would try to look for an exit, look for refuge, look to put their life and their family under protection, and the quickest [exit] is here — Tibú.”

The town, he warned, is critically unprepared. The health system could collapse. Jobs could disappear. And with U.S. cuts to USAID funding, local and international humanitarian groups now have limited resources to respond.

Operating within this fraught environment as a community leader takes a personal toll, Botero noted, confessing that since joining the council, his social life has plummeted due to threats from armed groups.

“We have conflict like everyone else,” Botero said. “But we are coping. Not all of us are guerrillas.”

---

According to a former Venezuela Armed Forces member, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retribution, the Venezuelan government is a facade for organized crime.

Raised in a family of farmers with close friends who were part of the Venezuelan army, the former officer said he witnessed the system’s allure and its rot firsthand.

Aspiring to follow his godfather’s military legacy, the former officer recalled the common ambition of his youth: “it was either become a baseball player or a soldier.”

He said that the Venezuelan military kills, kidnaps and rapes other Venezuelans, and this abuse is formalized and taught to young recruits. Maduro uses the military for drug trafficking, the former officer said.

“Venezuelan soldiers who enter the army forces get stuck there. They can’t leave. If they try to leave, they’re killed,” he added. While top officials enjoy “mansions, whisky, trucks, escorts” and are “millionaires”, the rank-and-file soldiers starve.

The economic disparity forces an impossible choice on troops, as “a carton of eggs costs more than a soldier earns in a month.” But the former armed forces member emphasized that the Venezuelan migration crisis is not just about economics, but about terror.

“People think Venezuelans migrate only because of the economy. No. They migrate because of fear. Because of violence. Because of persecution. Because of criminal control. Because of hunger. Because of the collapse of the system,” he said.

A Venezuelan family, their lives packed into a few suitcases, crosses Puente Simón Bolívar into Colombia on Nov.16. Many migrants walk for over a month from Cúcuta to Bucaramanga to find employment and better opportunities. (Video by Abby Pender)

He hopes that Trump does intervene in Maduro’s regime — even if it means that his country might become a pawn for the States.

“In Venezuela, a person earning a normal salary makes maybe 10 to 20 dollars a month. A family of four needs about 300 dollars a month to eat decently. How do people survive? They hustle. They sell things. They do informal work. They do a thousand jobs. They live with stress every day,” the ex-army officer said.

That desperation, he believes, would shape the military’s response.

“If the United States intervenes, Venezuelan soldiers will not fight,” he said. “They’ll drop their weapons and surrender.”

He suggested that many soldiers admire the US military.

“They see America as powerful, organized, and disciplined. Many dream of being trained by the US military. Many told me, ‘If the Americans come, I’ll join them,’” he said.

NEWS OF THE DAY:

By: Anastasiia Kryvoruchenko

U.S. PEACE PLAN REQUIRES UKRAINE TO GIVE UP LAND: The U.S., together with Russia, is working on a peace plan, part of which will include Kyiv giving up some of its territory, including land that Russia does not currently control, and reducing its weapons and army. Ukraine would do this in exchange for security guarantees from the U.S., Reuters reported.

However, there is no indication that Russia has changed its previous demands and Ukraine has not been included in the Russia-U.S. peace talks.

Yesterday, Zelenskyy met with U.S. military officials in Kyiv and recently called on the U.S. to bring a secure and stable peace to end the war after a trip to visit Erdogan in Turkey, which held the previous Russia-Ukraine peace talks, which were largely unsuccessful bar agreements on POW swaps.

UKRAINE DEMANDS RUSSIA PAY CLIMATE COMPENSATION: At the UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil, Ukraine demanded reparations from Russia amounting to $43 billion to compensate for the environmental damage caused by the war. This will be the first time in history a country has demanded compensation for climate damage.

Over 3.5 years of war, fires caused by missile strikes and weapons production among other things have caused greenhouse gas emissions to increase significantly. The report Ukraine cited at COP30 estimated that 236.8 million tons of CO2 have been emitted due to the war. Water, soil, and forests have been severely affected by the release of toxic substances.

RUSSIA’S WAR WITH EUROPE WOULD BE MUCH FASTER THAN WITH UKRAINE: Last week, the German chancellor proposed legislation to increase troop numbers, which is part of the country’s ambition to become Europe’s strongest army, Newsweek reported.

The EU is working on a defense readiness plan for 2030, as European intelligence warns that Russia could attack Europe by the end of the decade. The chief of Poland’s armed forces, Wiesław Kukuła, has issued the most recent warning, stating that Russia is already preparing to attack Poland after Ukraine.

DOG OF WAR:

This is Aki. Nastia met him at the cafe near her home, which became another working place for her during the blackouts. In the next couple of days we won’t have electricity for 17 hours a day in Kyiv.

Stay safe out there.

Best,
Abby