He Is Being Sued in the U.S. for Human Rights Abuses. He Could be Deported First.

Rafael Quero Silva faces a lawsuit brought by five people who say he oversaw their abuse and mistreatment as a military officer in Venezuela. But he could be deported before the case is heard.

The handsome actor, who appeared on a telenovela with salt and pepper locks under a baseball cap marked “POLICE,” seemed familiar to Venezuelan exiles who watched the show.

It wasn’t long before he was recognized as the lieutenant colonel who ran a notoriously repressive military unit in Barquisimeto, Venezuela.

Rafael Quero Silva, a former officer in Venezuela’s National Guard, was once accused by dozens of people and several human rights organizations of ordering violent military raids and the torture of detainees who were arrested after massive crackdowns on antigovernment protests in 2013 and 2014.

At some point after the protests ended, Mr. Quero Silva left the national guard.

Then, in 2018, Venezuelans living in the United States discovered that he had a new life in the Miami suburbs as a television extra on the Spanish-language soap opera “My Perfect Family.”

On Tuesday, five people who say they were tortured, shot or beaten by soldiers under Mr. Quero Silva’s command filed a claim in U.S. court under the Torture Victim Protection Act. The 1991 law allows the filing of civil suits in federal court against people who committed torture or extrajudicial killings while acting in an official capacity in another country. The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages, although it is unclear whether Mr. Quero Silva has any assets.

The civil lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Florida, would mark the first time a Venezuelan military officer would stand trial in the United States for abuses carried out under the government of President Nicolás Maduro in the more than 10 years since he took power, the lawyers said. The plaintiffs say they hope their case can serve as an important symbolic step for those who were abused or wrongfully detained under the Maduro regime.

“We would have the first case ever, despite all the attempts to bring a little accountability for what has been going on for over a decade,” said Almudena Bernabeu, a London-based lawyer with the law firm Guernica 37 Centre, which specializes in human rights cases. Her firm, along with the Miami-based firm McDermott Will & Schulte, represents the plaintiffs.

But before the lawsuit is ever heard, Mr. Quero Silva, 55, could be expelled from the United States.

He was arrested by ICE officials in March and now sits in immigration detention in South Florida awaiting deportation after being denied bail, according to U.S. government records. The Department of Homeland Security declined to say why he was detained.

Mr. Quero Silva’s family and his lawyer, Eduardo X. Pereira, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The New York Times attempted to contact them through various means: leaving a note at the South Florida address listed as Mr. Quero Silva’s residence, text messages and voice mail messages to his wife, and reaching out to the lawyer’s office via telephone, email, as well as contacting Mr. Pereira’s wife.

The lawsuit arrives during a tense period of heightened tensions between the two nations. The United States continues to carry out strikes on supposed drug-carrying boats in the region, seize Venezuelan oil tankers and increase its military presence off the South American country’s shores.

In 2013, in the wake of the death of President Hugo Chávez, Mr. Maduro ran for the presidency for the first time.

During this same period, Mr. Quero Silva was stationed at Detachment 47, a national guard post in Barquisimeto, a city of 1.2 million people in northwest Venezuela.

When electoral results showed Mr. Maduro had won by a razor-thin margin, protesters who questioned the results hit the streets for months, including in Barquisimeto. The demonstrations turned violent and claimed at least 40 lives nationwide, including nine security forces, and marked a turning point in the government’s willingness to crack down on dissent.

Interviews with protesters and other witnesses found an apparent pattern of abuses on the part of security forces, who frequently beat, kicked and threatened protesters and, in some cases, shot demonstrators at point-blank range with plastic pellets.

Human Rights Watch called the violence “a systematic practice by the Venezuelan security forces.”

Other human rights groups documented instances of aggressive raids by soldiers in the city of Barquisimeto, involving the use of tear gas and lack of search warrants, at a minimum of 12 gated housing complexes.

Tuesday’s lawsuit accuses soldiers under Mr. Quero Silva’s command of firing tear gas and rubber bullets into and at people’s apartment complexes; setting on fire the roof of one of the buildings; breaking apartment windows and damaging buildings and cars. One plaintiff said her apartment was targeted because she often rendered aid to protesters.

Mr. Quero Silva was often there at the forefront, the lawsuit says, overseeing these military raids. The plaintiffs knew him, and they said they recognized him while they were in custody or participating in protests — an unusual factor uncommon in human rights cases where victims try to hold perpetrators accountable.

Mr. Quero Silva ordered the people under his command to inflict harsh treatment on anyone detained, according to the lawsuit. People were beaten with riot shields or forced to crouch for hours in custody, and Mr. Quero Silva was present, giving the orders, the plaintiffs say.

One of the plaintiffs, Wladimir Díaz, 32, a former student leader who now lives in Chicago, says he saw Mr. Quero Silva several times at protests when his unit used excessive force. At one demonstration, Mr. Díaz said guardsmen stormed a university building where students had sought refuge and fired live ammunition at protesters and he was struck.

“He destroyed families,” Mr. Díaz said to The Times. “I had to abandon my country. I have a gunshot wound. His people, his orders ruined my life.”

Carlos Doubront, 38, a Venezuelan lawyer who now lives in Miami, says he was attacked by soldiers from Mr. Quero Silva’s unit who made him kneel for hours, according to the lawsuit. He says knew Mr. Quero Silva from the neighborhood because they had friends in common and Mr. Doubront’s father was a general in the national guard.

“The boss doesn’t get his hands dirty, he has lackeys for that,” Mr. Doubront told The Times. “But when he starts to repress, he doesn’t forgive anything, he doesn’t respect anything.”

Another plaintiff, Ehisler Moises Vásquez Caridad, said in the lawsuit that she was shot in the face by Mr. Quero Silva’s soldiers.

Yet another, Maria Elena Uzcátegui Castro, said Mr. Quero Silva personally supervised the search of her house, where soldiers tied her up and robbed her. She was held in detention for four months, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs said they all filed complaints with the authorities at the time but eventually fled Venezuela in the face of threats and other forms of repression.

The International Criminal Court has an open investigation against Venezuela for crimes against humanity for the attacks on protesters.

Four years after the protests, word got out that Mr. Quero Silva had moved to the United States. In 2018, a South Florida journalist who had previously worked in Barquisimeto posted screenshots on social media of the former military officer in his roles on the television show, including one where he happily cheered at a horse racetrack.

Shortly after Mr. Quero Silva was spotted living in the United States, F.B.I. agents in both the United States and Spain interviewed victims who had accused Mr. Quero Silva of ordering torture and appeared to be preparing a case, the plaintiffs told The Times.

It is unclear what came of the investigation. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Then in March of this year, Mr. Quero Silva was arrested by ICE agents.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on Mr. Quero Silva’s case, but said the agency was targeting “the worst” of “criminal illegal aliens.”

The agency said a majority of people arrested by ICE have had criminal charges against them. “This statistic doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, Interpol notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists, etc.,” D.H.S. said in its statement.

One of the plaintiffs, Mr. Doubront, testified at one of Mr. Quero’s Silva’s immigration hearings where he said Mr. Quero’s Silva’s lawyer suggested that his client was just following his generals’ orders.

While the plaintiffs are happy to see Mr. Quero Silva in detention, they fear that he may be deported before they can face him in court. Deportation flights to Venezuela are currently paused, so, if removed from the United States, Mr. Quero Silva could be taken to another country, such as Mexico.

“We would have preferred federal charges, and legal recognition, a sentence as a human rights violator — not like this, that he entered the country illegally or lied to the U.S. government,” said Andrés Colmenárez Farías, one of the plaintiffs. “We don’t want him to be deported. How does deportation serve us? For us, deportation would be a prize to impunity.”

David C. Adams contributed reporting from Miami.

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