One after the other, males within the prison-like clothes worn by individuals in immigration custody sit in entrance of the video convention digital camera and level to bruises on their our bodies.
Some level to their faces. Others gesture to arms, legs or torsos. A number of of the bruises are fairly darkish.
Within the video recording of their message, the eight males say that they’re being held on the El Paso Service Processing Middle within the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that the ability’s guards beat them on Feb. 25. They are saying that the guards discriminate towards them as a result of they’re Venezuelan.
“In this institution, as is evident by showing my face and in the majority of our bodies, today was another day of mistreatment by the officials of this center, of which we are tired and ask for help and justice,” the primary man to talk, Jesús Quintero, stated in Spanish.
Within the video, Quintero’s face seems swollen on one aspect, his higher cheek a deep shade of purple.
ICE didn’t reply to a request for remark from Capital & Principal. (Although many ICE detention services are owned and operated by personal jail corporations, the one in El Paso, Texas, is run by ICE itself.)
The allegations come as President Donald Trump has targeted his anti-immigrant rhetoric on Venezuelans and notably on a gang known as Tren de Aragua, which his administration just lately labeled as a terrorist group. His administration flew teams of Venezuelans to detain them in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and falsely asserted that they had been all gang members.
Extra just lately, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans with out giving them hearings. In consequence, ICE despatched lots of to El Salvador, the place they’ve disappeared into the nation’s infamous jail system.
It’s not clear from the El Paso video, which was recorded by an unidentified member of the family and later offered to Capital & Principal, what began the beating. Ledys Isea, a Venezuelan man held in the identical unit as the lads within the video, later instructed Capital & Principal that the guards had been shifting these within the principally Venezuelan housing unit to eat dinner on the identical time that they had been shifting a unit of principally Mexican males.
Isea stated that tensions had been rising within the facility, notably due to overcrowding and the next shortages in meals, hygiene merchandise and clothes. He stated a few of the Mexican males started jeering on the Venezuelans, calling them vulgar names. He stated from there, issues received “out of control.”
However, he famous, the guards attacked solely the Venezuelans. Then the guards pulled most of the Venezuelans into one other room and beat them, he stated.
“There are companions who went into the processing room who weren’t beaten, and when they came out they were bruised,” Isea stated in Spanish.
“None of the Mexicans that day were detained,” he added. “None of the Mexicans were beaten. Not a one.”
Within the video recorded later that very same day of a few of the males asking for assist and justice, Darwin Andrés Gómez Izquiel says that an official kicked him within the ear in the course of the assault.
Miguel Bahamonde Barrio holds up his thigh to indicate the swelling and says officers kicked him there, too.
“We’re being victims of abuse, aggression and racism,” Bahamonde Barrio stated in Spanish. “This thing that’s happening here is too inhumane because, in reality, here is supposed to be a processing center. We’re not prisoners. We’re being processed by immigration officials.”
Although immigration detention can appear and feel like a jail, from a authorized perspective, it’s civil detention relatively than legal detention. Which means ICE can maintain individuals provided that it believes they’re unlikely to indicate up for his or her court docket instances or if they’re deemed harmful.
A number of of the lads within the video ask for ICE to deport them in order that they received’t must spend extra time within the facility.
Most of the males recite the identification numbers hooked up to their immigration data on the video. Capital & Principal confirmed that every one of those that gave their IDs had been ordered deported between one and 4 months previous to the alleged beating. All however one had appeared earlier than New Jersey judges for his or her court docket hearings. The opposite man had his case heard in Texas.
Isea stated that after the video surfaced, officers positioned a number of of the lads in solitary confinement, which he known as “the hole.” He stated a few of the males had been organizing a starvation strike and that they deliberate to proceed making movies and weren’t afraid of the results.
“They treat us like dogs, and we’re human beings,” Isea stated. “We’re tired already. We’re tired. We’re tired of the bad treatment.”
In early March, after talking with Isea, Capital & Principal realized that he had been deported to Mexico. The Biden administration arrange an settlement with Mexico to obtain sure nationalities, together with Venezuelans, and the Trump administration has continued to make use of that pathway for some deportations.
Isea’s sister, who nonetheless lives in Venezuela, stated her brother doesn’t but have a cellphone however is working to avoid wasting up for one and calls her when he can from borrowed telephones. Among the males from the video had been deported with him.
Utilizing their identification numbers, Capital & Principal confirmed that not less than two of the lads within the video are not in ICE custody although, as of mid-March, it appeared that not less than 4 had been nonetheless at El Paso Service Processing Middle.
Copyright 2025 Capital & Principal
