Mother of executed Venezuelan rebel officer Oscar Pérez is living her own hell in U.S.

President Donald Trump praised her son as a courageous patriot who sacrificed his life for Venezuela’s freedom, and took her by the hand to briefly share the stage during his recent speech at a Venezuelan gathering in Miami.

But despite the presidential embrace, the mother of assassinated rebel police officer Oscar Pérez has suffered through anguished moments in the United States, forced into a harsh immigration process that first landed her in a detention center and now keeps her mired in uncertainty and on the edge of poverty.

The case of Aminta Pérez reflects the ambiguity of the U.S. government as it deals with the grave crisis in Venezuela, leading the international efforts to end the Nicolas Maduro “narco-dictatorship” while at the same time displaying a hostile face toward the Venezuelans who knock on its doors to ask for political asylum.

In an interview with el Nuevo Herald, Pérez said she’s grateful for Trump’s gesture and hopes that he can help her obtain assistance for herself, Oscar’s three children and her only living son, Luis Armando Pérez, who also fled Venezuela and is living in another Latin America country amid difficult conditions.

But she has received little support so far — excluding her brief meeting with Trump in Miami last week — and her interactions with U.S. officials have been marked by hostility and mistreatment since September 2017, when she asked for asylum after arriving at the official Tijuana-San Diego border crossing with her daughter-in-law and Oscar’s children.

They went to the border at Oscar’s request, because he was worried about the safety of his mother, wife and children even though they were already in Mexico.

At that time, the police officer and pilot had already started on the road to a rebellion against Maduro and feared that the regime might be able to reach them in Mexico. “Your lives are in danger,” he told them.

But the reception in the United States was not what she had hoped for.

“They handcuffed me in front of the children, and my daughter-in-law was also handcuffed. The children cried because they did not know what was happening. They put ankle shackles on us. Then they chained us around the waist and we could not even walk … and I was asking myself, ‘What’s going on here?’” she said in an interview with el Nuevo Herald.

What was happening was that Pérez and her family were undergoing the detention process that today is normal for all immigrants who surrender to U.S. officials at the border and ask for asylum.

Even though immigration officials are quick to point out that the people applying for asylum are only “detained” and not “under arrest,” the process is often virtually the same.

“The process would not have been different if they had found her trying to cross the border illegally at midnight with a 10-pound package of cocaine in her bag,” said Thomas Wright, a New York lawyer who has befriended Pérez. “The treatment would be the same.”

Pérez, who is now free on parole while waiting to put her asylum petition before an immigration judge, said she felt she was treated like a criminal during her detention and was occasionally mistreated physically.

She was also separated from her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, and did not see them or hear about them again until after she was released.

At the time, she was suffering because of the horrors her family was experiencing. One of her sons, Edgar Alexander, had been murdered in Caracas a few months earlier and Oscar was in hiding, wanted by Maduro’s intelligence agencies.

She could not sleep

“I was totally destroyed, didn’t know what to do. I could not stop crying. Aside from the murder of my son, I was also mortified by Oscar’s situation. I didn’t know anything about him. The only way I heard anything was when he was in the news,” Pérez said.

Guards at the detention center soon noticed she was crying incessantly.

“One of the female guards came to me and asked me, ‘Why are you crying? You don’t come here to cry. And be quiet now, because if not I’m going to put you in a room alone, without visits or anything.’”

That’s when Pérez starting holding her tears till nighttime when she could cry in silence, her face covered with blankets to avoid being noticed.

Her three months in detention were stressful to the point where she damaged her teeth from clenching her jaw so hard. Oscar was turning up in news reports every once in a while, and that’s when she could breathe again, knowing he was alive.

It was shortly after she was released on parole that she learned, along with the rest of the world, that Oscar had been executed in January 2018 during a security force raid at a hideout, which was broadcast on social media in real time.

Oscar Pérez, whose life story is to be made into a documentary, offered several times to surrender after he realized that he was surrounded by security agents, according to video clips posted on social media. But the offers to surrender were rejected.

“The order is to kill you,” the officer in charge of the raid reportedly told Oscar before his death.

The assassination of Oscar Pérez shook public opinion in Venezuela and focused international attention on the Maduro regime.

What his mother is now demanding most while in exile is justice for her son. And that’s what she called for when Trump passed her the microphone briefly during the gathering last week at Florida International University.

Her appearance at the event was by chance. She had telephoned Sen. Marco Rubio’s office to ask how to attend the event, and his staffers became interested when she explained who she was. Her case was then relayed to the event’s organizers in the White House.

It is not clear if the organizers of the event were aware of Pérez’s immigration status. When asked about the issue, Senator Marco Rubio’s staff responded: “Our office has been in contact with Mrs. Perez, however we do not have consent to discuss her case with the media.”

The outpouring of sympathy generated by Oscar Pérez’ murder has not yet turned into assistance for his mother, who like many Venezuelans forced to flee to the United States are living in poor conditions.

Regrettably, returning to Venezuela is not an option, Pérez said.

Pérez, who has asked for donations for her and her family through the Zelle account aminta.r.perez.c@gmail.com, said relatives still in Venezuela are being harassed by the regime, and one of her brothers was murdered recently under strange circumstances.

Pérez is also worried about her son, also in exile, Luis Armando.

“Many times he doesn’t even have anything to eat,” she said, adding that despite her own needs in the United States she sometimes sends him money because he’s in an even worse situation.

“I ask for assistance because we’re really in need,” she added.

This story was originally published February 25, 2019 at 2:26 PM.