Trump's migration crackdown causes spike in Venezuelans seeking asylum in Spain

The ever-increasing anti-migration policies of the Donald Trump administration are spurring thousands of Venezuelans to request residency Spain.

Most recently, the Republican government requested that the US Supreme court help them cancel the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) of more than 300,000 Venezuelan migrants in the United States.

Humanitarian parole has allowed people to temporarily enter the US due to urgent humanitarian reasons, while TPS is government protection granted by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to foreigners who are unable to return home safely.

The potential end of both of these schemes could leave hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans without legal protection who are now at risk of being detained or deported.

Thousands of Venezuelans who once saw the US as a suitable country to migrate are now looking at other alternatives – and given that they speak the same language – Spain has become the obvious choice.

Ana María Diez, director of Coalición por Venezuela, an organisation which brings together Venezuelan NGOs protecting refugees, told El País: “After Trump's decisions, everyone has stopped pursuing the American dream and is now trying to chase the European dream, and obviously the gateway is Spain”.

Asylum applications in Spain have now reached record levels. The country saw a 54 percent increase in asylum applications from Venezuelan citizens during the first quarter of 2025.

According to figures from Spain's Ministry of Interior, 23,274 Venezuelans requested asylum in the first three months of their stay in Spanish territory.

Another 8,186 from Venezuela obtained residency for humanitarian reasons during these same months. Today, almost six out of ten applications for international protection in Spain come from Venezuelans.

Venezuela is in the midst of an ongoing crisis due to the policies of President Nicolás Maduro, who has been using security forces to imprison his critics.

Many citizens are being repressed and intimated, while thousands also live in extreme poverty. According to Human Rights Watch, “over 20 million Venezuelans live in multidimensional poverty with inadequate access to rights-essential goods and services, including food and essential medicines”.

They have reported that over eight million Venezuelans have been forced to leave the country since 2014.

For years, thousands of Venezuelans have chosen to escape to Spain part thanks to its open-arms policy.

Since 2018, asylum seekers have almost automatically received a residence permit on humanitarian grounds.

Although the latest population census does not include the newest arrivals, at the end of the third quarter of 2024 there were around 390,000 Venezuelans living in Spain, with around 200 new residents every day.

According to Spain's National Stats Office (INE), the number of Venezuelans residing in Spain has grown tenfold over the past decade.

Trump's tough stance on migration is therefore only serving to boost a wave of Venezuelan migration to Spain which was already on the up.