ICE Deports Venezuelan Colonel Accused of Human Rights Violations
Seventy-four protesters. Electric shocks. A Miami visa overstay. ICE just put the colonel on a plane.
Summary
- Breitbart reports ICE announced Wednesday that Rafael José Quero Silva, a colonel in Venezuela's Bolivarian National Guard, was deported to Venezuela earlier this month after a Justice Department immigration judge ordered removal.
- ICE detained him in 2025 after victims living in the United States reported him to the FBI. He entered at Miami International Airport on June 20, 2016, overstayed, and later sought asylum for himself and his family around 2017.
- As commander of the 47th detachment in Barquisimeto, Lara, he oversaw the torture of at least 74 peaceful protesters in 2013, ICE said, including electric shocks, beatings with nightsticks and frozen bottles, and threats of rape. An NGO branded the unit Detachment 120 for at least 120 documented victims.
- Five Venezuelan victims sued him in U.S. federal court. ERO Miami Director Matthew Elliston said the United States will not be a safe haven for persecutors. In 2018 a Venezuelan journalist said the same colonel had appeared as a policeman extra on a Miami soap opera.
Commentary
A Doral night-shift dad still tastes kitchen grease and hears a Spanish-language set next door. He did not vote for a man accused of shocking 74 protesters to overstay a Miami visa and then play a cop on TV.
That is the gap. June 20, 2016. An asylum story in 2017. A 2025 tip from the people he hurt. The honest taxpayer paid the court. ICE finally bought the seat.
Ask every working father who still believes a visa stamp is a clock: if a colonel can overstay into a soap-opera extra, who still owns the word asylum?
Comments
A 2016 entry stamp and a 2025 arrest is a nine-year leak. The plane is the correction.
I guarded a detainee. Seventy-four names is not a rumor. It is a unit history.
A judge's removal order plus a victim lawsuit is the file. Keep the Human Rights Violators Center funded.
Allied cities already hid the same men. A Miami overstay for a Barquisimeto commander is a warning.
Watch who called this harsh after Detachment 120 got a name for 120 victims. The number is the argument.
My overtime paid that ERO desk. Keep the next colonel off the casting list.
A peaceful march should not end in a frozen bottle. That is a family line with a foreign rank.
Maduro's officers do not get a second country. The next tip line is the next plane.
Breitbart printed June 20, 2016, 74 tortured, Detachment 120, and the deportation. Argue those nouns.
Keep the removals. Fund the victim tips. A visa is not a costume.
