Elizabeth Troval

Castellanos opened her shop in 2019 to cater to a Venezuelan population that has grown to roughly 75,000 people in the Houston metro area.

So many of them live in the small suburban city of Katy.

It's sometimes called Katy-suela.

Castellanos and her husband chose Katy for the good schools and affordable homes.

But this recent wave of immigration is not how Houston's relationship with Venezuela started.

Before Houston received tens of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants, it was Americans who sought opportunities in Venezuela.

In this training video from the 1950s, an American father is assigned to work in Venezuela's oil fields and is writing back home to his wife.

In Houston, Rice University professor Francisco Monaldi, who's from Venezuela, often meets Americans who worked there decades ago.

And now that the U.S.

government wants to develop Venezuela's oil sector, we may start to see this dynamic again.

Monaldi says U.S.

companies are seeing which Venezuelans in places like Haiti might be interested in going back to Venezuela to work in the oil sector.

A stint back in Venezuela at a big oil company may be attractive for some, but for Lady Lynn Castellanos in Haiti...

She fears returning to Venezuela would endanger her family.

Rebuilding the country will take time, and her kids were raised here.

But families like hers may not have a choice.

The Trump administration has revoked protections and work permits for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.

She says even if you have an ID, even if you've had a work permit for years, even if you've followed immigration laws, there's no guarantee you won't be detained and deported.

In Katy, Texas, I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.

When winter storm Uri hit five years ago, Ed Herz with University of Houston was at his apartment.