Two earthquakes hit Venezuela on Wednesday, and rescuers are still searching for thousands of people unaccounted for in the aftermath. The scale of the missing remains unclear — no confirmed death toll had been released as of Thursday morning.
Search teams scrambled across affected areas as the full picture of the disaster came into focus. The dual strikes compounded the difficulty of any coordinated response, with crews working through damaged terrain to reach survivors.
The asylum ruling
On the same day the Venezuela disaster unfolded, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling that gives the federal government authority to turn away asylum seekers at the border. The decision resets how border officials can process — or reject — people attempting to claim asylum when they arrive at a U.S. entry point.
The court didn’t dismantle the asylum system outright. But the ruling does give the executive branch wider discretion to deny entry before a formal claim can be heard, which immigration attorneys and advocates have warned could leave vulnerable migrants with few legal options once they’re turned back.
Critics of the ruling argue it effectively shuts the door on people fleeing exactly the kind of conditions now playing out in Venezuela — natural disasters, political instability, economic collapse. Supporters say the ruling restores order to a system that had been overwhelmed at the southern border for years.
Venezuela has been a significant source of migrants reaching U.S. borders in recent years, driven by a long-running economic and humanitarian crisis that predates Wednesday’s earthquakes. How the Supreme Court’s decision will interact with any surge of Venezuelans attempting to flee earthquake damage isn’t yet known.
The Justice Department hasn’t detailed how quickly the new authority will be implemented at ports of entry, and no revised processing guidelines had been made public as of Thursday.
