Vani Shed

Spring 2026

On vacation near the Venezuelan border, Lucas Hunter went out for a ride. He didn’t come back for 192 days. Welcome to the new age of state-sanctioned kidnapping, where your passport could get you disappeared.

BY SEAN WILLIAMS

AT AROUND 10 A.M. ON JANUARY 7 last year, Lucas Hunter stood in the busy Colombian border town of Paraguachón when a man in military fatigues looked him dead in the eyes and said something his schoolboy Spanish ma...