Georgia saw explosive growth in its Venezuelan population. What’s next?
Adrián Albarran woke up at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 3 with a phone call from a frenzied friend in his native Venezuela. He had hundreds of unread text messages. Loved ones in Caracas described loud explosions and flashes of bright light. They said they felt buildings shake.
There was confusion and a sense of anticipation, said Albarran, a metro Atlanta resident since 2023.
Once the dust settled, his hopes were confirmed: a U.S. military raid had captured Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro. The operation opens a new chapter in both Venezuela’s troubled history and in the relationships between the U.S. and countries in the region.
“I was in shock,” Albarran said.
In the immediate aftermath, significant uncertainty lingered around the future of Venezuela — PresidentDonald Trump has claimed the U.S. would run the country, but Maduro allies remain in charge.
The military intervention also raises questions about the future of U.S. immigration policy toward Venezuelans — a community that has grown rapidly in Georgia and across the U.S. and one that has been on the receiving end of increasing restrictions from the Trump administration.
According to the most recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the number of people of Venezuelan origin in Georgia reached over 55,000 in 2024, up from about 33,600 in 2023. That increase made Venezuelans the fifth largest Hispanic immigrant group in the state, behind Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Colombians.
In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, there were just over 23,000 Georgia residents with Venezuelan origins, according to census data. In 2014, that number was 8,400 — meaning the Venezuelan community in Georgia grew by over 500% in the last 10 years.
The Atlanta region is one of the nation’s top metropolitan areas for Venezuelan immigration.
In a 2025 report analyzing census data from 2019 to 2023, the Migration Policy Institute found that metro Atlanta ranks fifth nationwide in terms of the size of its Venezuelan immigrant population, with 20,000 people. MPI is a nonpartisan think tank focused on immigration. The South Florida and Orlando metro areas dominate the rankings, with a combined Venezuelan immigrant population of 240,000.
Among recent Venezuelan arrivals, the desire to go back is strong, and it’s an eventuality that feels more within reach after Maduro’s removal.
“I dream about going back every single day,” said Maria Mora.
Mora worked for years in Venezuela with a volunteer civil association cofounded by María Corina Machado, the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate sidelined by Trump in his plans for the country’s governance following the Jan. 3 strikes.
In the wake of Maduro’s refusal to cede power after losing a 2024 presidential election, Mora joined family in metro Atlanta. She said she left the country in tears and that she feared imprisonment and torture if she stayed.
“99.99% want to go back to their country. We miss it,” Mora said of Venezuelans.
In Albarran’s view, a minority of Venezuelans abroad will look to return immediately, while most will wait some time and assess “Venezuela’s reconstruction” under a democratically elected government.
“You do hear from a lot of people who say: ‘I’ll get my affairs sorted and in a few months, I’ll be back in Venezuela,’” he said.
Pedro Fuentes was born in Georgia but grew up in Venezuela, where he met his wife and where his oldest daughter was born. The family moved to metro Atlanta 10 years ago.
“Most of us want to go back to Venezuela,” he said. “We’re thankful to this administration. We’re thankful to all U.S. citizens who contributed their grain of sand. I know it’s their money, the money from their taxes,” funding military action in Venezuela.
In the days following the U.S. raid in Caracas, overwhelming support from Venezuelans mixed with withering criticism from Democrats at home and U.S. allies abroad, who blasted the move as a violation of international law.
Even some Republican lawmakers, including U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, raised questions about the legality and the wisdom of the operation.
Hopes for more lax immigration policy
Venezuelan immigration to Georgia made national news in February 2024 when Laken Riley, a nursing student, was killed in Athens.
Jose Ibarra, the Venezuelan national convicted of malice murder and related charges in the attack that left Riley dead, had been arrested for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022, before being paroled into the country.
The case became a conservative cause célèbre amid a surge of illegal border crossings during the Biden administration. Once back in office, the first bill signed by Trump last year was the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of theft or violent crimes.
According to MPI estimates, Venezuelans account for 24,000 of the 479,000 unauthorized immigrants living in Georgia.
In the past, the U.S. sought to facilitate admission of foreign nationals fleeing leftist authoritarian regimes. But under Trump, Venezuelans have been subject to both the administration’s broad deportation campaign and additional sets of restrictions. In an address on Saturday, Trump repeated familiar rhetoric about the dangers of Venezuelan immigration.
“As I’ve said many times, the Maduro regime emptied out their prisons, sent their worst and most violent monsters into the United States to steal American lives,” Trump said.
In 2025, the Department of Homeland Security removed temporary deportation protections granted to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants under former President Joe Biden. It also ended a Biden-era humanitarian parole program that citizens of Venezuela and four other nations could use to legally enter the U.S.
Additionally, the Trump administration included Venezuela in its latest travel ban. And after an Afghan national opened fire on National Guard members in Washington, D.C., the administration halted all asylum petitions and immigration applications, including citizenship ceremonies, for people from 19 countries, including Venezuela.
Most members of metro Atlanta’s Venezuelan community interviewed by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said their priority is supporting plans for regime change in their homeland instead of concerning themselves with U.S. immigration policy.
“I’m seeing it up close. I have family and friends that will not be able to stay in the U.S,” Fuentes said. “This affects me because I’m seeing people be impacted. But I can’t ask the president to change the rules of the game just because it benefits me personally.
“This is his house. He has to clean house, and it’s his right to do so.”
Albarran said he views the hawkish immigration policy toward Venezuelans as tied to the Trump administration’s criticism of Maduro’s regime.
“Having Nicolás Maduro in power was to have a black mark on our nationality,” Albarran said. “We hope that going forward, things go back to normal.”
Pedro Viloria is director of community impact and well-being at the Atlanta-based Latino Community Fund. He immigrated from Venezuela as a child.
Viloria said he foresees “more lax immigration policy toward Venezuelans” with Maduro gone but urges the Trump administration to clear up what Venezuelan immigrants in this country should expect.
“It would really be nice to hear from this administration beyond that (military) action in Venezuela. What does that mean for Venezuelans that are here?” Viloria said. “At this point, there has not been any affirmation or communication with regards to what’s going to happen.”
Clarity is needed, Viloria said, because many Venezuelans will want to remain in the U.S., happy as they may be with regime change back home.
“At the end of the day, this has been a crisis that has been happening over almost 30 years,” Viloria said. “We have generations of Venezuelans that have come here, that have created families here, that have businesses here, that have grown here and contributed to this country and are most likely not going to go back ... whether the situation stabilizes in Venezuela or not.”
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