Mercedes Yamarte's three sons fled Venezuela for a better life in the United States. Now one languishes in a Salvadoran jail, another "self-deported" to Mexico, and a third lives in hiding -- terrified US agents will crash the door at any moment.

At her zinc-roofed home in a poor Maracaibo neighborhood, 46-year-old Mercedes blinks back tears as she thinks about her family split asunder by US President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown.

"I wish I could go to sleep, wake up, and this never happened," she says, as rain drums down and lightning flashes overhead.

In their homeland, her boys were held back by decades of political and economic tumult that have already prompted an estimated eight million Venezuelans to emigrate.

But in leaving, all three brothers became ensnared by politics

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