When Nicolás Maduro was captured and dragged onto a U.S. warship in early January, Venezuelan migrants across South America woke to news that many thought would change everything. In Buenos Aires, Uruguay and Chile, migrants wept with joy and declared they were going home. Andreína Di Giovanni, who runs a Venezuelan grocery store in Buenos Aires, said customers rushed in crying: "I am going back. I am going back."

The initial enthusiasm has faded quickly. The broken economy and repressive conditions that forced roughly 8 million people to flee over the past decade remain largely unchanged. A UN survey conducted in February across Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Guatemala and Chile found only 9 percent of Venezuelan migrants planned to return home in the next year. Greces Vicuña, who was imprisoned for three months in Venezuela for attending antigovernment protests before fleeing to Chile in 2018, put it simply: "The problems are not resolved. I am not going back."

The U.S. intervention removed Maduro but left his party in power, creating fresh uncertainty. While some migrants like journalist Ayrton Monsalve Barrios are selling furniture and terminating leases to return, most are staying put. Venezuela's new president Delcy Rodríguez has launched television ads urging migrants home, yet organizations tracking migration report no meaningful return movement. The mass displacement—roughly a quarter of Venezuela's population—remains one of the world's largest humanitarian crises.