A 35-year-old Venezuelan who lived in Texas for years is now nearly 6,000 miles from his wife and five-month-old American son after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported him to West Africa. Carlos Téllez Sánchez said he had never heard of Liberia until last week, when he found out he was being deported to the country between Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast just hours before his flight took off. He said he spent the 15-hour flight across the Atlantic in handcuffs and is now stranded in a remote area of the West African nation. “I don’t understand how a country that considers itself a global hero can act this way toward a human being,” he told CBS News in Spanish via video call. Téllez Sánchez said he now spends much of his time inside a hotel more than an hour from Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, where he was placed with deportees from Brazil, Colombia, Honduras and other countries. President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration has intensified this summer, with ICE making a record number of arrests. Increasingly, some detainees are sent to countries other than their own and banished to remote locations. Téllez Sánchez, who entered the United States illegally five years ago, is one of them. The Venezuela native had been in the United States since 2021 after fleeing his home country. He worked at a car dealership in Dallas during the day and drove for Uber Eats at night to support his family. CBS News was unable to find any criminal charges or convictions for Tellez Sánchez, beyond civil immigration violations. In December 2025, Téllez Sánchez was detained by ICE during what he hoped would be a routine immigration appointment. He spent eight months in ICE detention centers before his deportation to Africa. In 2021, an immigration judge granted Téllez Sánchez protection from being sent back to Venezuela, considering he could be persecuted there. Legally, however, that order did not prevent ICE from deporting him to any other country. Over the past year and a half, the Trump administration has negotiated so-called “third country” deportation agreements with dozens of nations around the world, including some notoriously dangerous places like South Sudan and the Central African Republic. Téllez Sánchez’s brother in Dallas, Juan Téllez, said he has no idea why Téllez Sánchez was sent to Liberia and that no one has given him an explanation. He described his brother as a good person and a hard worker who “didn’t deserve what happened to him.” In a statement to CBS News on Friday night, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Tellez Sánchez had been deported from the U.S. once before illegally crossing the southern border in 2021. DHS said he was then released under the Biden administration until his arrest by ICE during a screening appointment on Dec. 19. adding that he was “transferred to a safe third country on August 19”, presumably Liberia. DHS did not dispute that Téllez Sánchez has no criminal record. “If an illegal alien decides to file a lawsuit in court refusing to go to his or her home country, we are required by law to find a safe nation for him or her to go to,” the DHS added in its statement. “If an illegal alien decides to return home, we will give them a free flight home and a check for $3,000. The choice is theirs.” In Liberia, Téllez Sánchez says he does not have a clear plan. “It’s a very difficult situation,” he said, “one that I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” More from CBS News Go deeper with The Free Press in:
