At sundown in Maracaibo, Yosbelin Pérez carefully shapes aluminum “budare” griddles — a staple in Venezuelan kitchens for cooking arepas. She and her family run a small cookware business, melting all type of aluminum parts to make pots.

It’s the trade they had been doing for years until deciding to leave in 2024. They sold everything in hopes of migrating to the United States. They never made it, and returned to their aluminum business deep in debt.

Pérez says life has only grown harder since she came back.

“There is no future here, that's a lie. Here you work to live day to day. That's what you work for,” says Pérez.

But she doesn’t flinch when asked if she would do it all over again and try migrating again.

“No one is getting me out of here,” she says confidently. “Now we're going to focus on paying what we owe, on getting ourselves back on our feet, and that's it, I'm not moving from here.”

In Caracas, David Rodríguez, a motorcycle taxi driver, also returned this year after multiple attempts to live abroad.

He went back and forth to Colombia and Peru several times. He has missed most part of his son’s life who lives in the U.S. with the boy’s mother –Rodríguez's former partner. He did a tattoo resembling his journey: a comic-style boy in a spaceship, referencing the child’s departure to the U.S.

For Rodríguez, last year’s presidential elections meant hope that things would change in Venezuela so he wouldn’t have to leave again. When President Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed winner of the heavily contested election, he, once again, decided to leave, this time to the U.S.

“Our hope was the elections. None of us living abroad wanted to leave, ever,” says Rodríguez.

Those returning home like Pérez’s family and Rodríguez are finding harsher living conditions than when they left.

Currency crisis, triple-digit inflation and meager wages have made food and other necessities unaffordable. Adding to that, they return with debts and practically nothing to their name.

“I’m tired of emigrating,” says Rodríguez. “I want things to work out here, to be okay here, but it's difficult."

AP Video shot by Juan Arraez