In Support of Application for Asylum (Form I-589)
I, Alan David Coronado Dávila, declare under penalty of perjury under the laws
of the United States that the following is true and correct to the best of my knowledge:
I. PERSONAL BACKGROUND
My name is Alan David Coronado Dávila. I was born on November 16, 2002, in Venezuela. I am a Venezuelan citizen. I am the son of Brigzen Aroldo Coronado Lobo and María Dalia Dávila Moreno, both of whom file their own separate asylum applications. My younger brother, Kevin David Coronado Dávila, is included as a derivative beneficiary in my father’s application. I am unmarried and have no children.
I arrived in the United States on October 4, 2018, through John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. I was fifteen years old at the time. I arrived with my mother and my younger brother; my father had already been living in the United States since February 2017. I have lived continuously in the United States since the date of my arrival and have not returned to Venezuela. I am now twenty-three years old. My entire adult life — every job I have held, every relationship I have built, every experience that has shaped who I am as an adult — has taken place in the United States.
I attended the International High School in New York City, where I completed my entire secondary education, graduating in 2022. After graduating, I began working. I currently work in Bozeman, Montana, where I have lived since late 2024. I have a serious and stable relationship with a person who lives in Bozeman. My family is here: my father, my mother, my uncle Rodney Coronado Lobo — who is a lawful permanent resident of the United States and is married to a United States citizen, whom I also consider my aunt — and three cousins who were born or live in the United States. I have more family in the United States than I would have in Venezuela. The life I have built here is the only adult life I know.
II. MY MEMORIES OF VENEZUELA AND WHY I LEFT
I left Venezuela when I was fifteen years old. I did not leave as an adult who had built a life there and chosen to start over somewhere else. I left as a teenager, at an age when Venezuela was still the country of my childhood — not a place I had navigated independently as an adult.
What I remember of Venezuela includes experiences that, even as a child, told me something was deeply wrong with the country I was growing up in. I remember the violence in public spaces as something unremarkable, something people adapted to rather than confronted. One image that has stayed with me is witnessing a robbery on a school transport vehicle: a motorcyclist pulled up alongside the bus, reached through an open window, and took a game device from the hands of a girl sitting near me. No one intervened. It happened in seconds, in plain view, and then it was over. That kind of incident was not exceptional in the Venezuela I grew up in. It was routine.
I also remember the difficulty of obtaining basic services when I needed them most. When I suffered a serious injury to my hand as a teenager — a laceration that severed tendons and left my hand immobile — accessing proper medical care required multiple long and costly trips from Guarenas, where we lived, to the Hospital Ortopédico Infantil in Caracas, navigating public transportation including the metro each time. The surgical procedure to reattach the tendons and the subsequent rehabilitation program are documented in medical records from that hospital. What the process made clear to me was that in Venezuela, even urgent medical needs did not guarantee straightforward access to care.
Similarly, obtaining a travel document to leave the country required navigating a government bureaucracy that had largely stopped functioning. My United States tourist visa was in an expired passport, and renewing it proved extraordinarily difficult. We ultimately had to rely on my medical records to petition for a humanitarian extension of my passport. That experience reflects something essential about what life under that government was like: ordinary needs required extraordinary effort, and the state’s capacity to serve its own citizens had broken down.
I want to note that this difficulty has not changed. Venezuela does not maintain an operational embassy in the United States. My current Venezuelan passport is expired, and I have no practical way to renew it from within the United States. This is not a choice — it is a consequence of the Venezuelan government’s failure to maintain consular services here.
III. MY POLITICAL VIEWS AND MY IDENTITY AS SOMEONE FORMED IN THE UNITED STATES
I grew up in a household where opposition to the Chavista government was openly expressed. My parents opposed the government and said so clearly within our family and social circle. That political environment shaped my own understanding of Venezuela’s government and its impact on ordinary people’s lives. As I grew older — both during my last years in Venezuela and throughout my adult life in the United States — I developed my own views, consistent with those of my family: I believe the Venezuelan government has been responsible for the destruction of the country’s institutions, the erosion of basic rights, and the suffering of millions of people.
These views were not something I kept private. Among my friends, my family, and the people who knew me, my opposition to the Chavista government was known and openly expressed. I am prepared to support this with declarations from individuals who can attest to my political views. My opposition to the Venezuelan government is genuine and has been consistent throughout my adult life.
But I want to explain something about my situation that goes beyond my personal political opinions. I am a person who, from the Venezuelan government’s perspective, embodies a specific and suspicious profile. I left Venezuela at fifteen. I lived in the United States throughout my entire adult life. I held Temporary Protected Status — a form of protection granted by the United States government — for several years, until that designation was terminated in November 2025. My parents opposed the government openly within their personal and community circle in Venezuela, and that was known among those who knew them. My uncle, Rodney Coronado Lobo, had a publicly visible association with government-aligned political organizations in Venezuela and now lives in the United States, married to an American citizen, with daughters who are American citizens.
When I try to imagine how Venezuelan authorities would see me if I returned today, I do not think they would see a neutral person. I think they would see a young man who spent his entire adult life in the United States, who received American immigration protection through TPS, whose family has deep roots here, and who comes from a household with a known history of opposition to the government within their social and community environment. In the current political environment in Venezuela — where laws now formally criminalize perceived sympathy with American interests or support for international pressure against the government — that profile alone is enough to generate suspicion, questioning, and risk.
IV. MY TEMPORARY PROTECTED STATUS AND ITS TERMINATION
I obtained Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuela, which was first granted to me with an effective date of August 8, 2022. My TPS was subsequently renewed, covering me through September 10, 2025. During this period, I was authorized to live and work lawfully in the United States.
On November 7, 2025, the Department of Homeland Security terminated the 2021 Venezuela TPS designation. My TPS terminated on that date. I no longer hold TPS or any other lawful immigration status. The loss of TPS made the prospect of being forced to return to Venezuela suddenly and concretely real in a way it had not been before.
I want to be honest about why I did not apply for asylum earlier. When TPS was terminated, I was dealing with significant uncertainty and instability. I was trying to find stable employment and was not immediately in a position to focus on preparing a legal filing. It took time to stabilize my situation — I finally found a degree of income stability through a delivery platform. At the same time, my father — who has always been the one in our family to research and navigate these kinds of processes — was going through the same disruption, and we were working together to find the right path forward. We sought legal advice from an attorney in December 2025, but after several months of work, we concluded that the approach being proposed did not honestly reflect our situation. After ending that relationship in April 2026, we reorganized and prepared our applications based on what is true. I am filing within a reasonable period following the changed circumstances that eliminated my lawful status in the United States.
V. THE LEGAL AND POLITICAL FRAMEWORK THAT SHAPES MY FEAR
My fear of returning to Venezuela is grounded in specific legal developments that demonstrate how the Venezuelan government has formalized the persecution of individuals it perceives as connected to American interests or opposed to its authority.
In November 2024, the Venezuelan National Assembly enacted the Ley Orgánica Libertador Simón Bolívar contra el Bloqueo Imperialista y en Defensa de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (Organic Law Libertador Simón Bolívar against the Imperialist Blockade and in Defense of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela), published in Official Gazette No. 6,859 Extraordinary on November 29, 2024. This law criminalizes, with prison sentences of twenty-five to thirty years, any conduct the government characterizes as promoting, supporting, or facilitating international sanctions or actions against Venezuela’s sovereignty. The language is deliberately broad: it encompasses not only direct action but perceived sympathy, indirect support, or conduct the government interprets as favorable to foreign interests. The law also creates a National Registry of suspected individuals, with immediate administrative consequences including asset freezes.
On January 3, 2026, the Venezuelan government published Decree No. 5,200 in Official Gazette No. 6,954 Extraordinary, declaring a State of External Commotion across the entire national territory. The decree was issued in the context of events surrounding the capture of Nicolás Maduro on that date. Article 5 of the decree ordered the immediate search and capture across all Venezuelan territory of any person involved in the promotion or support of what the government described as a United States armed attack. The scope of that language — promotion and support, not only direct participation — is what concerns me.
As of the date of this application, I have lived continuously in the United States for more than seven years. I held TPS granted by the United States government, and I come from a family with documented connections to American life and institutions. I did not participate in any action against Venezuela. But under the framework these laws create, what matters is not only what I did — it is what the government concludes about who I am and what my years in the United States represent. That conclusion, I believe, would not be favorable to me.
VI. WHY RETURNING TO VENEZUELA WOULD BE ESPECIALLY DANGEROUS FOR ME
There is a dimension of my situation that is specific to me and that I want to explain clearly: I do not know Venezuela as an adult. I left at fifteen. I have never worked there, never rented an apartment there, never navigated its bureaucratic systems independently, never dealt with its checkpoints, its colectivos — armed pro-government groups that enforce political loyalty through intimidation and violence within communities — or any of the daily realities that a Venezuelan adult learns to manage over years of living there.
That absence of experience is not simply an inconvenience. It is a form of vulnerability. An adult who has lived in Venezuela knows, through experience, what to say and what not to say, how to behave at a checkpoint, what topics to avoid in conversation, how to present oneself to avoid drawing attention from groups or authorities looking for signs of disloyalty. I do not have that knowledge. I would be returning as someone who looks Venezuelan and carries a Venezuelan name, but who thinks, speaks, and moves through the world like someone formed entirely in the United States. That combination — Venezuelan identity, American formation, years of TPS, family ties deeply rooted in the United States — is precisely what makes a person like me visible and suspicious in the eyes of the Venezuelan government and those who act on its behalf.
I also have no meaningful support network in Venezuela. My father, my mother, and my brother are here. My uncle, my aunt, and my cousins are here. The person I am in a relationship with is here. The relationships that form the fabric of my daily life are all in the United States. If I were forced to return to Venezuela, I would be going alone, to a country I do not know as an adult, without protection, without support, and with a profile that I believe would make me a target for suspicion and persecution.
VII. WHY I CANNOT SEEK PROTECTION IN VENEZUELA
I cannot seek protection from Venezuelan authorities because the Venezuelan government is the source of the threat I fear. Venezuela has no functioning independent judiciary capable of protecting individuals from government persecution. It has no free press that could expose abuses. Civil society organizations that once provided some measure of protection have been dismantled, exiled, or silenced.
Relocating within Venezuela would not protect me. The Venezuelan government’s security apparatus — including the SEBIN (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional, or Bolivarian National Intelligence Service), which functions as the government’s political police and has been associated with arbitrary detention and the suppression of dissent, and the DGCIM (Dirección General de Contrainteligencia Militar, or General Directorate of Military Counterintelligence), the military intelligence body responsible for internal surveillance and political repression — operates throughout the entire national territory. The colectivos, armed pro-government groups that enforce political loyalty through intimidation and violence at the community level, are present across Venezuela’s cities and towns. There is no safe location within the country for someone with my profile.
VIII. CONCLUSION
I am asking the United States government for protection from being returned to Venezuela. I completed my education here, built my adult life here, and formed the relationships and values that define who I am here. Venezuela is the country of my birth and my earliest memories, but it is not a country where I could live safely today.
My fear is genuine and specific. It is the fear of someone who, based on who he is, where he has lived, what his family looks like, and what the Venezuelan government has formally established as grounds for persecution, has concrete and well-founded reasons to believe that returning would put his life and freedom at serious risk.
I have been honest in this declaration. I have described my memories, my circumstances, and my fears as accurately as I can. I respectfully request the protection I am seeking.
I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct to the best of my knowledge and belief.
Executed on: ___________________________
_______________________________________
Alan David Coronado Dávila
Date of Birth: November 16, 2002
Bozeman, Montana