CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP)—Relatives of Venezuelan deportees from the United States who died in the earthquakes that struck their country demanded an apology from Venezuela’s interim government on Monday.

The 146 deported people were detained in La Guaira state hours before the twin tremors decimated the coastal region on June 24.

Upon their return to Venezuela, they were stripped of their cell phones and belongings and placed in an old building controlled by intelligence agents.

“My son did not have a criminal record either in the United States or in Venezuela… What were they doing carrying out an unlawful arrest?” said Oswadelis Nunez, the mother of deceased Daniel Alejandro Nunez Ramirez.

Her son would have turned 29 on August 26.

“We know that the earthquake was a chance event, but why were they there without their belongings?” Nunez, 58, asked in front of reporters.

When the quakes hit, she alleged, authorities blocked the detainees from leaving the building and had not prepared an evacuation plan.

“We want moral compensation, an apology, (to know) why they did that, why that happened to our children,” the bereaved mother said, adding that affected families intended to file domestic and international complaints.

She also called for better deportation protocols, criticising the lack of information provided about how many people were returned to Venezuela, how many survived the quake and how many died.

According to an Instagram post by the government, the detained group was made up of 120 men, 19 women and seven children.

“I will love you forever, my little boy,” read a sign held by Nunez, who said she had found his body in an improvised morgue after a five-day search in hospitals across La Guaira and Caracas.

The government “failed in its duty of care. They must be held accountable,” said Luz Maris Melendez, whose detained son Angelo David Mejia Melendez also died.

June’s 7.2 and 7.5 magnitude quakes killed some 6,500 people.