CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — When explosions erupted by night in Venezuela’s balmy capital, 21-year-old Mariana Camargo dashed through the streets of eastern Caracas.
It was at 2:05 in the morning and, as explosions boomed in the background, Associated Press photographer Matías Delacroix was on the street snapping what would become one of the first images of the American military operation in Venezuela.
Days later — after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was replaced by his vice president following his capture by the Trump administration — Camargo and Delacroix found a moment of calm at the same place the emblematic photo was taken.
“A woman arrived in a big truck and she screeched to a stop and said ‘kids what are you doing here, go home they’re bombing!” Camargo remembered. “We were like nine people and we were like ‘Well, let’s run.’ We started to run and passed by here.”
The images show Camargo in a white shirt and jeans, sprinting through the street, with fear and urgency painted on her face, with a group of her friends running behind her. She said she clocked Delacroix standing to the side as he took the photo.
It was that emotion that caught the eye of Delacroix, who minutes earlier awoke to the rumbling sound of American strikes, grabbed his camera and ran onto the street toward the explosions. It was there, with the sound of military aircrafts overhead, that the two crossed paths: one person running away from the blasts and one running toward them.
“What caught my attention was how you were running, with your cellphone and clearly scared. I have photos of your friend that was behind you, but between the two photos, yours was the one that expressed the most what was happening,” said Delacroix to Camargo as they flipped through the photos.
As the photograph proceeded to paint the front pages and websites of the world’s biggest media, capturing a moment set to transform the hemisphere, Camargo’s friends began to see her and write her in their WhatsApp group message.
“Am I tripping or is that Nana Mariana???” asked one of her friends, posting a picture of the photo. (In Venezuela, Nana is a nickname for Mariana.)
“IT IS NANA!” another friend wrote shortly after.
The photo slowly became a joke in her friend group and even turned into a meme with the words “the gringos have arrived!” written over it. Camargo laughed as she scrolled through the messages.
“Now I laughed, and I laughed when I saw the photo. My mom laughed, my friends too. They made stickers and memes and all that," Camargo said. "But I still see the videos of what happened that day, of the explosions, I hear the sounds and I still feel this sense of panic."
On Sunday, a day after the strikes and as chaos, Camargo wrote to Delacroix over his Instagram account, asking if he had more photographs of the moment.
When they met up on Tuesday, chatting on the street, the two parted with a hug.
“Crazy things always happen to me,” she said with a laugh. “Of course I end up on the street during a bombing and I go viral. It’s nuts.”
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Associated Press reporter Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Mariana Camargo poses for a photo in the Altamira neighborhood of Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Pedestrians run after explosions and low-flying aircraft were heard in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
The fatal shooting Wednesday of a woman by an immigration officer in Minneapolis was at least the fifth death to result from the aggressive U.S. immigration crackdown the Trump administration launched last year.
The Department of Homeland Security said the officer fired in self-defense as 37-year-old Renee Nicole Macklin Goodtried to run down officers with her vehicle. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said video of the incident showed it was reckless and unnecessary. It occurred as the federal agency escalates immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota by deploying an anticipated 2,000 agents and officers.
Last September, Immigration and Customs Enforcement fatally shot another person outside Chicago. Two people have died after being struck by vehicles while fleeing immigration authorities. And a California farmworker fell from a greenhouse and broke his neck during an ICE raid last July.
No officers or agents have been charged in the deaths.
ICE agents fatally shot Silverio Villegas González during a traffic stop Sept. 12 in suburban Chicago. Relatives said the 38-year-old line cook from Mexico had dropped off one of his children at day care that morning.
At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said federal agents were pursuing a man with a history of reckless driving who entered the country illegally. They alleged Villegas González evaded arrest and dragged an officer with his vehicle.
Homeland Security said the officer opened fire fearing for his life and was hospitalized for “serious injuries.” However, local police body camera videos showed the agent who shot Villegas González walking around afterward and dismissing his own injuries as “nothing major.”
Homeland Security has said the death remains under investigation.
Another shooting, this one non-fatal, occurred in Chicago last fall. Marimar Martinez survived being shot five times by a Border Patrol agent but was charged with a felony after Homeland Security officials accused her of trying to ram agents with her vehicle. The case was dismissed after videos emerged that Martinez’s attorneys said showed an agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck.
Immigration authorities were rounding up dozens of farmworkers July 10 at Glass House Farms in southern California when Jaime Alanis fell from the roof of a greenhouse and broke his neck. The 57-year-old laborer from Mexico died at a hospital two days later.
Relatives said Alanis had spent a decade working at the farm, a licensed cannabis grower that also produces tomatoes and cucumbers, located in Camarillo about an hour east of Los Angeles. They said he would send his earnings to his wife and daughter in Mexico.
During the raid, Alanis called family to say he was hiding. Officials said he fell about 30 feet (9 meters) from the greenhouse roof.
The Department of Homeland Security said Alanis was never in custody and was not being chased by immigration authorities when he climbed onto the greenhouse.
A man running away from immigration authorities outside a Home Depot store in southern California died after being hit by an SUV while he tried to cross a nearby freeway on Aug. 14.
Police in Monrovia northeast of Los Angeles said ICE agents were conducting enforcement operations when the man fled on foot to Interstate 210. He was running across the freeway's eastbound lanes when an SUV hit him while traveling 50 or 60 mph miles (80 or 97 kph). He died at a hospital.
The man killed was later identified by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network as 52-year-old Roberto Carlos Montoya Valdez of Guatemala.
The Department of Homeland Security said Montoya Valdez wasn't being pursued by immigration authorities when he ran.
A pickup truck fatally struck Josué Castro Rivera on a highway in Norfolk, Virginia, as he tried to escape immigration authorities during a traffic stop Oct. 23.
Castro Rivera, 24, of Honduras, was heading to a gardening job with three passengers when ICE officers pulled over his vehicle, according to his brother, Henry Castro.
State and federal authorities said Castro Rivera ran away on foot and was hit by a pickup truck on Interstate 264.
The Department of Homeland Security said Castro Rivera’s vehicle was stopped as part of a “targeted, intelligence-based” operation and that Castro Rivera had “resisted heavily and fled.”
His brother said Castro Rivera came to the U.S. four years earlier and worked to send money to family in Honduras.
AP journalists Sophia Tareen in Chicago and Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed. Bynum reported from Savannah, Georgia.
FILE - People wait outside of Glass House Farms, a day after an immigration raid on the facility, July 11, 2025, in Camarillo, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
FILE - People embrace outside of Glass House Farms, a day after an immigration raid on the facility, on July 11, 2025, in Camarillo, Calif. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)
FILE - Law enforcement personnel investigate after the Department of Homeland Security said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a man in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago on Sept. 12, 2025. (Candace Dane Chambers/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)
FILE - Law enforcement personnel investigate after the Department of Homeland Security said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot a man in the Franklin Park suburb of Chicago on Sept. 12, 2025. (Candace Dane Chambers/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)
