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HOLD for 6PM --For Venezuelan Migrants Living in Colombia, the Road Home is
Paved with Mixed Messages

Megan Janetsky

   MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA - Ada Gutierrez has thought about returning to
   Venezuela every single day since Colombia went into quarantine in late
   March.

   Gutierrez, one of 5 million people who have fled crisis-stricken
   Venezuela, has spent months of quarantine in Colombia selling candy on
   the streets of MedellĂn, the country's second biggest city.

   If she is lucky, she can scrape together enough money each night for
   her and her and her 18-month-old daughter to split a hotel room with
   other Venezuelan families. If not, the two sleep on the streets.

   "Just like all the Venezuelans around here, we have slept on the
   street," she said, outside a station delivering parcels of food to
   migrants.

   "If we have to, we do not eat for the entire day to pay for our room.
   Our reality here is living day-to-day, sleeping in the streets and
   going hungry," said Gutierrez.

   Life in limbo

   As Latin America emerged as the epicenter of the pandemic, Gutierrez
   said she wants to return home to Venezuela just as 81,000 other
   Venezuelans had done by the end of June, according to Colombia's border
   control agency.

   Gutierrez is among 30,000 Venezuelans that Colombian authorities say
   are in limbo on the Colombian side of the border.

   Their choice is stay in Colombia and struggle to survive through the
   lockdown or go home to a situation of uncertainty.

   At the beginning of the pandemic, migrants walked hundreds of miles
   back to the Venezuelan border. Others returned by buses facilitated by
   Colombia, the biggest receiver of the exodus -- now eager to send them
   home.

   When they arrive at the border, migrants describe a brutal, sometimes
   months-long process before they can return home, packed into facilities
   by Venezuelan authorities with hundreds of other migrants, sleeping on
   cement floors and often eating little more than undercooked eggs and
   corn cakes known as arepas.

   Fear

   The return would be too harsh for her baby, Eva, to go through,
   Gutierrez said. Other vulnerable populations -- families, the elderly,
   and migrants living with disabilities or medical conditions -- have
   echoed Gutierrez' fears.

   So day after day, she has opted to stay, hoping that at the end of the
   day, she and Eva will have food, a place to sleep and enough luck to
   not get infected.

   In recent weeks, the Venezuelan government has placed a limit on
   migrants crossing back to Venezuela, only letting 400 of its citizens
   cross the land border three times a week.

   This comes despite President Nicolas Maduro's calls for Venezuelans to
   return home at the beginning of the pandemic, announcing over state
   television that returnees would be treated with "love and affection."

   Now, more than 24,000 migrants are stuck waiting in Colombia alone,
   many in makeshift camps in big cities like MedellĂn and Bogota. The
   Colombian government said that the process to return could now take up
   to 6 months.

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