By Susana Erazo, CNN
(CNN) — Oswadeliz Núñez remembers arguing with her son Daniel when he decided to get a tattoo when he was 24. About four years later, that tattoo helped her identify Daniel’s body after he was killed in the twin earthquakes that devastated Venezuela last month.
Daniel had arrived back in Venezuela the day of the disaster, after being deported from the United States. From La Guaira, he called his mother from the phone of a Venezuelan intelligence service (SEBIN) officer, letting her know he was in the country.
“He told me, ‘No, Mom, we’re here with SEBIN officers,’” Núñez told CNN. He told her he and other deportees had eaten, had medical examinations and were set to spend the night at a hotel in Macuto in La Guaira, while the administrative procedures for their repatriation were being completed. The following day, he would make the nearly seven-hour trip to the town of El Tigre to reunite with his mother.
That reunion never happened. About 40 minutes after what would be his last call to his mother, the earth shook and the hotel he was in crumbled to the ground – trapping many of its inhabitants beneath the rubble.
It’s not yet clear how many of Daniel’s fellow deportees were killed alongside him that day – unconfirmed reports suggest possibly as many as 12.
Nationwide, the disaster killed thousands of people and displaced thousands more.
The agonizing search
The deportation flight carrying Daniel departed from Miami and landed at 10:22 a.m. local time at Simón Bolívar International Airport in Venezuela, on the Wednesday the earthquakes hit. According to figures released by Venezuelan authorities and ICE Flight Monitor, a Human Rights First project that tracks deportation flights, there were 146 people on board: 120 men, 19 women, and seven children.
That same Wednesday, Venezuela’s Vuelta a la Patria (“Return to the Homeland”) mission announced the arrival of Flight 164, saying the passengers had been received at Simón Bolívar International Airport “with dignity” and under “all necessary protocols” to ensure “a happy reunion in our nation.”
But that reunion was short-lived.
After the earthquakes hit, Núñez tried to contact authorities – only to receive no helpful information. She then made the journey to La Guaira, where she and a team of friends and relatives took matters into their own hands – searching hospitals, clinics and morgues for Daniel.
“We slept two or three hours at a time and kept searching. We’d go into hospitals with eight, nine, 10 floors, climb every floor and check room by room,” she said.
The search lasted until Monday, when Núñez returned to the disaster site convinced that her son had not survived and that his body was still beneath the rubble.
Officials finally directed her to a port facility that had been turned into an emergency morgue after countless bodies were unearthed from the rubble in the days following the earthquake.
“When we went to retrieve my son’s body, there was complete chaos,” Núñez said. “Bodies were lying on the floor.”
Núñez finally found a body corresponding to the number she was given. It was her son – but not the face she remembered.
“Daniel’s face was completely crushed; you could see his bones,” she recounted. Núñez’s nephew went to clean Daniel’s left arm, which was still intact.
“We saw his tattoo,” Núñez said. “When he got that tattoo, I argued with him. But now I thank God he got it, because that’s practically how I was able to recognize him.”
Red tape amid the rubble
Then came the bureaucratic hurdles she had to clear, all while the grief was still fresh and excruciating.
“They told me the cremation and burial would be free, but that we’d