‘In the hands of God’: One Venezuelan family’s journey to the US

EL PASO, Texas (AP) — When Luis López was lost in Panama’s Darien Gap last year with his pregnant wife, their two children and her grandmother, he often knelt in the mud to beg God not to abandon them. Now safe in El Paso, Texas, after fleeing Venezuela and hosted by a Catholic bishop, the family awaits his sister and mother.

The two women also fled the country and crossed through the jungle, but with the end of U.S. pandemic-era asylum regulations and new migration rules looming over them. Despite that uncertainty, thousands like them are doing the same: fleeing poverty, violence and political persecution in their countries.

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