A migrant originally from Venezuela, Diuvar Uzcátegui, described to the
Washington Post what is happening at Guantanamo Bay. He was arrested in El Paso in late January, while working in construction.
He had no criminal record at all. He fled Venezuela to escape the misery being caused there by dictator Nicholas Maduro.
He had been cooperating with ICE agents since December 2023, when he crossed the border illegally. He was informed by ICE that he missed an appointment with them in late January, which he denies, and that is when he was arrested by ICE and sent to Guantanamo. He then spent two weeks there before being sent back to Venezuela, almost losing his mind in the process.
The migrants are spending almost 24 hours per day in an isolated cell. They are allowed to go outside once per week. Psychologists have stated for years that prolonged isolation like this in a jail cell can cause people to lose their grip on reality. Several migrants have tried to kill themselves by various means, as described below.
This is straight out of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, treating human beings like this.
From the Washington Post. --
Uzcátegui, José Daniel Simancas and Franyer Montes said they were denied calls to lawyers or loved ones after repeated pleas. They said they were subjected to humiliating and invasive strip searches. They described prolonged periods in isolation, with only two one-hour opportunities to go outside over two weeks.
Their testimonies echoed the fears expressed by human rights groups — that migrants transferred to a place known for its isolation and history of torture allegations could be vulnerable to abuse.
The migrants’ conditions in Guantánamo “were horrific, and are far more restrictive, more severe and more abusive than what we would see in a typical immigration detention facility in the United States,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project. The American Civil Liberties Union is one of many organizations that sued the administration to allow legal access to the migrants.
The migrants described being supervised by military guards, a concern for legal rights groups that have stressed that immigrants are there because of a civil, immigration violation, not alleged war crimes like the 9/11 detainees. Blurring the lines between civilian and military enforcement, Cho said, encroaches “on the division between civil society and militarized society.”
“At the end of the day, military staff are not supposed to be enforcing civilian law, which is immigration law,” Cho said. “And by placing military guards to detain people in detention, that is exactly what is happening.”
Cho said the migrants’ alleged days-long stretch in their cells also fits the definition of solitary confinement as laid out by the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules, which define it as holding prisoners for more than 22 hours per day without “meaningful human contact.”
In the days that followed, more migrants began filling the naval station prison. Uzcátegui could hear men screaming from other cells, he said, pleading to be let out and threatening to kill themselves.
“Get me out of here,” he heard one scream again and again. “I’m going to kill myself.”
Franyer Montes, 22, said he reached a point in his 13-day incarceration when he considered taking his own life. Thoughts of his mother and child held him back.
José Daniel Simancas was one of the detainees who tried to kill himself during his 10-day stay there. He attempted to cut his wrists with plastic water bottles that he had tried to sharpen. But the edges didn’t cut deep enough, he said. He and the other migrants interviewed for this story said they had seen or spoken with at least two other men who acknowledged trying to end their own lives.
“One tried to hang himself with the sheet, but he couldn’t tie it to the table because it was too small,” Simancas said. “Another swallowed 10 screws, and they took him to the emergency room several times.”
He added, “We all thought about killing ourselves.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/immi...tanamo-trump-migrants-deportations-venezuela/
