ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have recognized practically a dozen immigrants who’ve been flown to Guantanamo Bay. Authorities officers have refused to launch the names of detainees or present particulars concerning the crimes that landed them in detention.
The navy planes departed from Texas in fast succession, eight flights in as many days. Each carried greater than a dozen immigrants that the U.S. alleged are the “worst of the worst” sorts of criminals, together with members of a violent Venezuelan avenue gang.
Since Feb. 4, the Trump administration has flown about 100 immigrant detainees to the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility higher identified for having held these suspected of plotting the 9/11 terrorist assaults. Officers have extensively touted the flights as an indication of President Donald Trump’s dedication to one of many central guarantees of his marketing campaign, they usually’ve distributed images of among the immigrants at each takeoff and touchdown. However they haven’t launched the names of these they’re holding or supplied particulars about their alleged crimes.
In current days, nonetheless, details about the flights and the folks on them has emerged that calls the federal government’s narrative into query. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune have recognized practically a dozen Venezuelan immigrants who’ve been transferred to Guantanamo. The New York Occasions printed a bigger record with some, however not all, of the identical names.
For 3 of the Guantanamo detainees who had been held at an immigration detention middle in El Paso, Texas, ProPublica and the Tribune obtained information about their felony histories and spoke to their households. The three males are all Venezuelan. Every had been detained by immigration authorities quickly after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and was being held in custody, awaiting deportation. In some instances, they’d been languishing for months as a result of Venezuela, till lately, was largely not accepting deportees. In accordance with U.S. federal courtroom information, two of them had no crimes on their information aside from unlawful entry. The third had picked up a further cost whereas in detention, for kicking an officer whereas being restrained throughout a riot.
Relations of the three males mentioned in interviews on Tuesday that they’ve been left fully at the hours of darkness about their family members. All of them mentioned that their kinfolk weren’t criminals, and two supplied information from the Venezuelan Inside Ministry and different paperwork to assist their statements. They mentioned the U.S. authorities has given them neither details about the detainees’ whereabouts nor the flexibility to talk with them.
Attorneys say they’ve additionally been denied entry. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, arguing that the U.S. Structure provides the detainees rights to authorized illustration that shouldn’t be stripped away simply because they’ve been moved to Guantanamo.
“Never before have people been taken from U.S. soil and sent to Guantanamo, and then denied access to lawyers and the outside world,” mentioned Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer within the ACLU case. “It is difficult to think of anything so flagrantly at odds with the fundamental principles on which our country was built.”
Yesika Palma sobbed as she spoke about her brother Jose Daniel Simancas, a 30-year-old building employee, and the way it felt to consider him being handled like a terrorist when all he’d accomplished was try to come back to the USA in pursuit of a good job. Angela Sequera was distraught about not having the ability to converse to her son, Yoiker Sequera, who’d labored as a barber in Venezuela.
Michel Duran expressed the identical dismay about his son, Mayfreed Duran, who additionally labored as a barber. “To me it’s the desperation, the frustration that I know nothing of him,” he mentioned in a cellphone interview in Spanish from his house in Venezuela. “It’s a terrible anguish. I don’t sleep.”
In response to questions concerning the Guantanamo detentions, officers on the Division of Homeland Safety insisted, with out pointing to any proof, that some — however not all — of the immigrants they’ve transferred to Guantanamo are violent gang members and others are “high-threat” criminals. “All these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally,” an company official mentioned in a press release. Some detainees are being held in Guantanamo’s maximum-security jail whereas others are within the Migrant Operations Heart that previously has been used to accommodate these intercepted at sea.
Prior to now, the U.S. authorities has withheld details about instances that it says contain a menace to nationwide safety. In these instances, the authorities say, data they’re utilizing to make custody determinations is confidential. The federal government mentioned among the folks despatched to Guantanamo are tied to the Tren de Aragua felony group, which Trump designated a terrorist group when he took workplace. Among the many issues regulation enforcement has used to determine members of the group have been sure tattoos, together with stars, roses and crowns, although there’s disagreement on whether or not the apply is dependable. Attorneys have expressed concern that the federal government generally makes use of nationwide safety considerations as a pretext to keep away from scrutiny.
Donald Trump
The Guantanamo detentions could also be among the many highest-profile strikes the Trump administration has made as a part of its mass deportation marketing campaign, however federal brokers have additionally fanned out throughout the nation over the past a number of weeks to conduct raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. Knowledge obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune exhibits that from Jan. 20 by the primary days of February, there have been no less than 14,000 immigration arrests. Round 44% of them have been of individuals with felony convictions, and of these, near half have been convicted of misdemeanors. Nonetheless, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, has mentioned that he’s not glad with the tempo of enforcement.
Trump directed the departments of Protection and Homeland Safety final month to organize 30,000 beds at Guantanamo and later mentioned the positioning was for “criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
Relations of three of these at present detained in Guantanamo mentioned the immigrants all had tattoos. And one among them, Simancas, was from Aragua, the state the place Tren de Aragua was born. The detainees’ kinfolk dispute that their family members have something to do with the group. “This doesn’t make sense. He’s a family man,” Palma mentioned in Spanish of her brother. “Having tattoos is not a sin.”
Palma, who’s at present dwelling in Ecuador, mentioned her brother left Venezuela years in the past, first dwelling for a time in Ecuador after which in Costa Rica. He determined to attempt his luck in the USA final yr, crossing with a bunch that included his spouse and cousin, who have been quickly launched into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, they each mentioned in interviews. All three ladies mentioned Simancas was pleased with his work on building websites and shared TikTok movies he made exhibiting the progress of a few of his initiatives, set to music. Simancas known as his cousin on Feb. 7 saying he was being taken to Guantanamo. “It is truly distressing,” his sister mentioned. “I have to have faith because if I break down I can’t help him.”
Duran’s father solely discovered of his son’s potential whereabouts after recognizing his face in a TikTok video with among the photos launched by the U.S. authorities of males in grey sweats and shackles being led into navy planes in El Paso.
Duran had left Venezuela hoping to sooner or later open his personal barbershop in Chicago, the place he had kinfolk. He described his son, who has a toddler, as a jokester and a devoted employee. Duran was detained in July 2023 on his third try crossing the border, his father mentioned. He remained in detention following a conviction for assaulting a federal officer throughout a riot on the immigration middle in El Paso in August, a couple of month after his arrival. He’d known as his father on Feb. 6, asking him to assemble documentation that might show he had no felony file in Venezuela as a result of officers have been attempting to tie him to Tren de Aragua. That was the final his father heard of him.
Angela Sequera was used to speaking to her son every single day on the cellphone whereas he was detained in El Paso, however then she abruptly stopped listening to from him. On Sunday she bought a name from a detainee contained in the El Paso middle telling her that her son Yoiker had been transferred, however she wasn’t in a position to converse to him; when she regarded him up on-line, it nonetheless confirmed him as being on the border.
She’d final heard from him a day earlier. “Estoy cansado,” I’m exhausted, she mentioned he advised her in Spanish. “It’s unfair that I’m still detained.” He’d been held contained in the detention middle in El Paso since September, after turning himself in to the Border Patrol in Presidio, practically 4 hours south of El Paso.
Yoiker Sequera, who was first recognized by the web publication Migrant Insider, is among the many three Venezuelans named within the lawsuit filed by the ACLU. The 25-year-old had needed to be a barber ever since he was a boy, his mom mentioned, identical to his uncle. That’s how he made a dwelling wherever he went, in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia. He continued to chop hair alongside the migrant route, as he was attempting final yr to make his option to his household in California, and contained in the detention middle.
Angela Sequera mentioned her son had deliberate on crossing the border and attempting to hunt asylum in the USA. “Now they want to tie him to criminal gangs. Everything that’s happening is so unfair.”
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