The simple house on a street ridden with potholes in this town on Colombia's restive border with Venezuela has become a refuge for the newly homeless: 40 Venezuelan soldiers who abandoned their posts and ran for their lives to escape socialism.

The young National Guard troops sleep on thin mats on the floor. In one room, several flak jackets rest along a wall. On a balcony, boots that got wet crossing the muddy Tachira River are set out to dry.

"I was tired of people seeing me as just one more of them," Sgt. Jorge Torres said, referring to dictator Nicolas Maduro's brutal socialist government. "I'm not."

A high-stakes plan by the Venezuelan opposition, backed by President Donald Trump's administration, to bring humanitarian aid into the country floundered Saturday when troops loyal to Maduro refused to let the trucks carrying food and medical supplies cross, but it did set off a wave of military defections unlike any seen yet amid the country's mounting crisis. Over 320 mostly low-ranking soldiers fled in a span of four days, Colombian immigration officials said Tuesday.

With no relatives in Colombia, several dozen have ended up in a shelter run by a priest. The home on a street with low-hanging electrical wires is where they are nervously keeping track of relatives left behind, figuring out how to apply for asylum and deciding what should come next.

"The only way for this government to leave, unfortunately, and all of Venezuela knows it, is for there to be a direct intervention," said Sgt. Jose Gomez, a father of two. "The only one with that power is the international community."