On this episode of the Alejandra Campos Podcast, attorney Alejandra Campos sits down with Andrea Chimaras, daughter of the late Venezuelan actor Yanis Chimaras — a household name across Venezuela for decades of telenovela work.
Andrea was 20 years old, sitting in the back seat of her father’s car, when he was attacked and killed in April 2007. It is the first time she has spoken publicly about that day. What follows is a conversation about grief, about eight years of being unable to leave her own country, and about what it actually takes to start over in the United States.
April 2007: The Day That Changed Everything
Andrea describes a morning that broke from routine. Her father normally drove to the studio alone, but that day he offered to take her to work. Her then-boyfriend — now her husband, Gabriel — was driving. Her father was in the passenger seat. She was directly behind him.
Men intercepted the car. In her account, they did not demand money, did not try to take the vehicle, and did not attempt a kidnapping. They addressed her father by name, pulled him from the car, and stabbed him in the chest.
“I wanted to scream,” she says. “In my mind I was screaming, and nothing came out.”
They took the car keys, which left the family unable to drive him anywhere. A stranger walking down the street stopped, helped them carry him, and got them to a clinic three minutes away — arriving covered in blood. Her father did not survive.
Within an hour, she says, thousands of people had gathered outside the clinic. Every television network in the country was there. Andrea, her husband, and her 14-year-old sister were pulled into a car and taken to give statements. Rumors spread that the family had been kidnapped.
Context: Publicly, the case was handled as a street crime. A man confessed to the killing and was sentenced to 16 years in prison; he later escaped from a Venezuelan prison. Andrea’s family has never accepted that account, for the reasons she describes below. We present her testimony as her own.
Why She Believes It Was Political
Andrea’s doubts are specific, and they accumulated over years:
- Nothing was taken. No money, no car, no demands.
- They used his name. The attackers identified him before the attack.
- The medical detail. She says the forensic examiner told the family the wound was so precisely placed that nothing could have saved him, even in a hospital.
- The statements didn’t match. When she finally obtained the police reports — years later, after arriving in the U.S. — what was written bore little resemblance to what she had told investigators. The file described an ordinary robbery.
- The lineup. At the identification, the man presented as the perpetrator had supposedly been in a Venezuelan prison for six months, yet appeared clean-shaven and in new brand-name clothing. “Who is financing you?” she remembers thinking.
Her father, she explains, was politically active long before he was famous — she remembers party materials in the house as a child. He was a public figure with real credibility, he refused to leave the country, and he had begun meeting with opposition figures again. “He was too much of a patriot,” Andrea says. “He never imagined himself in another country.”
Eight Years Before She Could Get a Passport
After the killing, Andrea describes a period of attempted kidnappings, threats, and constant fear. Her passport applications were repeatedly rejected — fees paid, “errors” returned, no explanation. She was told the restriction would remain until the case was closed.
It was lifted in 2015, eight years after her father’s death. She left with her family and applied for asylum in the United States.
What her case shows about asylum
Attorney Campos points to this as the kind of case asylum was designed for. In general terms, U.S. asylum requires showing:
- Persecution, or a well-founded fear of persecution, on account of one of five protected grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group;
- That the persecution comes from the government or from a group the government is unable or unwilling to control;
- That the application is filed, as a general rule, within one year of the applicant’s last arrival in the United States, absent changed or extraordinary circumstances.
Two points matter especially for families in Andrea’s situation:
Political opinion can be imputed to you. You do not have to have been the activist yourself. Family members of a targeted political figure can be persecuted for the opinion the government attributes to them.
Spouses and children can be included. A spouse and unmarried children under 21 can generally be included as derivatives on the principal applicant’s asylum case.
Evidence is the case. Police reports, forensic records, press coverage, threat documentation, proof of denied government services, and country-conditions reports are what turn a story into a winnable claim. Andrea’s police reports mattered — including the parts that were wrong.
Asylum outcomes depend entirely on the evidence and the specific facts. Rules and deadlines for Venezuelan nationals and other humanitarian programs have changed repeatedly in recent years. Only a licensed immigration attorney reviewing your case today can tell you what applies to you.
Starting Over: Banks at 10 P.M., Then a Business
Andrea is blunt about the landing.
“I took off my cap and gown, hung it in a corner, and said: whatever I have to do to earn money honestly, I’ll do it.”
She cleaned bank branches at night — alone, terrified, still carrying the instincts of a country where that would have been unthinkable. She cleaned short-term rental apartments. She eventually found work in the countertop and granite industry and spent about three years learning it from the inside.
Her husband cleaned schools, worked construction, drove for rideshare apps — until he returned to the trade he actually knew. “I’m a mechanic,” he told her. They discovered how badly the U.S. needs mechanics.
Florida didn’t work financially. There was no saving, no buying a home, no vacations. After spending one New Year’s in Dallas with a cousin, Andrea fell in love with the city. She arrived in Miami on January 4 and had moved the whole family to Texas by January 30.
Her husband later applied to Tesla — “who says no?” she told him — and got in, specializing in electric vehicles. Today they run their own auto shop in Fort Worth, named after him, a year and a half old and serving EV owners among others. He learned English entirely on his own: no classes, no courses. Reading, listening, and talking to customers.
Her three children — one an infant, one three, one six when they arrived — are now bilingual.
On Fear, and on Finding Real Legal Help
Andrea is honest that the fear didn’t disappear at the border. “I feel the same panic now that I felt in Venezuela,” she says. “There it was: they’re going to rob me, they’re going to kill me. Here it’s: they’re going to take me out.” She notes that even people with status feel it.
Attorney Campos addresses why she practices immigration law when other attorneys tell her it’s too hard because clients get deported and get angry:
“If we who have the knowledge don’t do it, we leave clients completely defenseless. That would go against my ethics and against the reason I studied law. Even if we save one out of ten — someone was saved. That’s better than no one.”
Andrea’s own message: the immigrant community needs people willing to fight for the 1% chance. And it needs to be careful about who it hands its case to — fraud against newly arrived families is common.
The Takeaway
Andrea’s case is what asylum exists for. Many others like it never get filed — because the applicant didn’t know the one-year rule, didn’t know political opinion can be imputed to a family member, didn’t gather evidence while it still existed, or handed the case to someone who wasn’t a licensed attorney.
👉 If you need legal support, contact us at +1 (844) 922-6767. At Campos Law Firm, consultations are FREE.
English 
Spanish 
