Colombians flee Venezuela amid migrant crackdown

Hundreds of Colombians left Venezuela Tuesday, fleeing the country with their belongings instead of risking being deported empty-handed like more than 1,000 people sent home in the last week in a growing border crisis.

"We left at 3:00 am (0800 UTC) in the clothes we were wearing. We wanted to come back before they deported us," said Rosana Morena, a 25-year-old Colombian who fled Venezuela with her two children.

Colombians waded through the waist-deep water of the river that forms the border with Venezuela, carting refrigerators or mattresses on their backs as they made the trek back to their home country.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro closed the border between Tachira and the Colombian department of Norte de Santander last week in response to an attack by unknown assailants on an anti-smuggling military patrol. A civilian and three soldiers were wounded in the attack.

Maduro has sought to combat the rampant smuggling of heavily subsidized food and other goods out of Venezuela. He initially ordered the border closed for 72 hours, but later extended it indefinitely after accusing Colombia of waging "an attack on Venezuela's economy."

Venezuela has long taken advantage of its oil wealth to subsidize goods such as rice and toilet paper, making them up to 10 times cheaper than in Colombia. But now the country is in the midst of shortages, exacerbated by falling oil prices.

The Venezuelan government launched mass deportations of Colombians shortly after closing the border, drawing scathing criticism from Colombian Interior Minister Juan Fernanda Cristo, who decried the deportations as "a humanitarian tragedy."

The majority of the deportees were sent home for lacking documents, without their families or their belongings. Some 600 of them are currently being housed in shelters, while 400 are staying with relatives, according to officials.

Another 400 to 700 people have crossed the border into Colombia to avoid deportation, Colombian police said.

Many of those fleeing have accused Venezuelan soldiers of robbing their belongings and ordering them to leave their homes within a matter of hours.

The Colombian and Venezuelan foreign ministers are scheduled to meet Wednesday in the Colombian city of Cartagena to discuss the crisis.

bw/lw (AP, AFP)