This article is co-published with ProPublica, a volunteer office that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story magazine to get news items like this in your inbox as soon as they are published. Sign up for The Quick, our daily magazine that keeps readers informed of the most important news from Texas.
Eight airlines in eight days, eight of which were taken from Texas, the military planes flew in succession. More than a few immigrants were on board each one, including members of a violent Venezuelan city gang, which the United States claimed are the “worst of the worst” types of criminals.
Around 100 immigrant prisoners have been flown to the United States ‘ marine center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a hospital better known for holding those suspected of plotting the 9/11 terrorist attacks since Feb. 4. Authorities have commonly touted the airlines as a sign of President Donald Trump’s devotion to one of his campaign’s guiding principles, and they have also provided photos of some of the immigrant passengers at takeoff and landing. However, they haven’t revealed the names of the people they are holding or provided information about the alleged acts.
In recent days, but, information about the airlines and the people on them has emerged that invites the president’s narrative into question. Nearly a hundred Cuban refugees have been transferred to Guantanamo, according to ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. A larger roster with some, but not all, of the same names was released by The New York Times.
ProPublica and the Tribune spoke with the people of three of the Guantanamo prisoners who had been detained at an emigration detention facility in El Paso and obtained information about their criminal histories. The three gentlemen are all Cuban. Each had been taken into custody and was awaiting repatriation shortly after crossing the U.S. Mexico border. In some cases, they had been languishing for weeks because Venezuela, until late, was generally not accepting emigrants. Two of them, according to U.S. federal court documents, only had unlawful entry on their files. In addition, the second had brought a charge against the officer for kicking her while restrained during a riot while the second was in jail.
The three men’s families said in discussions on Tuesday that they had no idea who their loved ones were. They each claimed that their friends were not offenders, and two others provided evidence to back up their assertions. They claimed that neither the U.S. authorities had any knowledge of the detainees ‘ movements nor the ability to communicate with them.
Prosecutors claim they have also been denied entry. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint on Wednesday, contending that inmates ‘ constitutional rights shouldn’t be revoked because they were moved to Guantanamo.
” Never before have people been taken from U. S. ground and sent to Guantanamo, and therefore denied entry to doctors and the outside world”, said Lee Gelernt, the lead prosecutor in the ACLU situation. It’s difficult to imagine anything that thus blatantly disagrees with the basic principles that underpin our nation’s foundation.
When she described her sibling Jose Daniel Simancas, a 30-year-old construction contractor, and how it felt to think of him being treated like a criminal when all he’d done was try to immigrate to the United States in search of a good job, Yesika Palma sobbed. Angela Sequera was distraught about not being able to speak to her brother, Yoiker Sequera, who’d worked as a hair in Venezuela.
Michel Duran expressed the same despair about his brother, Mayfreed Duran, who also worked as a hair. ” To me it’s the despair, the stress that I know nothing of him”, he said in a telephone appointment in Spanish from his house in Venezuela. ” It’s a sad pain. I don’t sleep”.
In response to concerns about the Guantanamo punishments, leaders at the Department of Homeland Security insisted, without pointing to any proof, that some — but not all — of the refugees they have transferred to Guantanamo are aggressive group members and others are “high-threat” thieves. An organization established stated in a statement that “everyone of these individuals entered the United States illegally.” While others are being held in the Migrant Operations Center, which in the past was used to house those who were intercepted at ocean, are detained in Guantanamo’s maximum-security jail.
In an email, DHS spokesman Tricia McLaughlin responded to the ACLU petition by stating that there was a telephone system that prisoners could use to contact counsel. She continued,” If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens, including murderers and other vicious gang members than they do about American members, they should change their names.”
The U.S. state has previously withheld information about situations that it believes pose a threat to national security. In those cases, the authorities state, info they’re using to generate custody determinations is personal. The government claimed that some of the people who were sent to Guantanamo are connected to the Tren de Aragua judicial business, which Trump labeled a terrorist organization when he took business. Certain tattoos, including actors, roses, and crowns, have been used by law enforcement to detect members of the group, despite disagreements regarding the accuracy of the technique. The state occasionally uses national safety issues as a pretext to avoid investigation, according to some residents.
Federal agencies have even fanned out across the country over the past few weeks to do raids in neighborhoods and workplaces, despite the fact that the Trump administration’s detentions are among the most well-known moves in its mass deportation campaign. Data obtained by ProPublica and the Tribune shows that from Jan. 20 through the first days of February, there have been at least 14, 000 emigration detention. Around 44 % of them were of people with criminal convictions, and of those, close to half were convicted of misdemeanors. Also, Trump’s border king, Tom Homan, has said that he’s never satisfied with the speed of enforcement.
According to federal statistics obtained by the media companies, under former President Joe Biden, the Trump administration deported about 500 people per day on average, which is far below the average deportation rate of more than 2,100 per day for the entire 2024 fiscal year. However, the change could become attributed to lower amounts of border crossings, which have been dropping since last year.
Last month, Trump directed the Defense and Homeland Security agencies to set up 30, 000 bedrooms at Guantanamo Bay, and later claimed that the area was intended for” criminal illegal aliens threatening the American individuals.”
Three of the three people being held in Guantanamo are said to have piercings on them all. And one of them, Simancas, was from Aragua, the position where Tren de Aragua was born. The family of the detainees contest that their loved ones are connected to the class. ” This doesn’t make sense. He’s a community man”, Palma said in Spanish of her brother. ” Having tattoo is not a sin,” the saying goes.
Palma, who is currently residing in Ecuador, claims that her nephew left Venezuela decades earlier, first spending time in Ecuador and Costa Rica. He made the decision to seek asylum in the United States last month, joining a team that included his spouse and aunt, who were soon released into the country to seek asylum statements, they both said in interviews. Simancas and the other three ladies shared TikTok video he made showing the development of some of his tasks, set to music, and that they were proud of their work on construction sites. Simancas called his niece on Feb. 7 saying he was being taken to Guantanamo. ” It is absolutely distressing”, his girlfriend said. I must have faith because I didn’t help him if I get hurt.
The father of Duran only learned of his son’s possible movements after seeing his face in a TikTok video and some of the pictures the U.S. government has made of gentlemen in black pants and chains being escorted into military aircraft in El Paso.
Duran had left Venezuela in the hopes that he would one day opened his personal barbershop in Chicago with his family. He described his brother, who has a child, as a goofball and a dedicated employee. According to his father, Duran was detained in July 2023 after making his second attempt to cross the frontier. After being found guilty of assaulting a federal agent during a mob at the immigration facility in El Paso in August, about a quarter after arriving, he remained in confinement. Because authorities were attempting to link him to Tren de Aragua, he called his parents on February 6 and requested that he obtain documentation to support his arrest. His parents had only recently heard of him about that.
Angela Sequera used to call her brother every day while he was being held in El Paso, but she instantly stopped hearing from him. She received a visit from a defendant inside the El Paso middle on Sunday, telling her that Yoiker had been transferred, but she was unable to speak with him. However, when she looked him up digitally, it also indicated that he was at the border.
She’d last heard from him a moment earlier. ” Estoy cansado”, I’m exhausted, she said he told her in Spanish. ” It’s cruel that I’m still detained”. After turning himself in to the Border Patrol in Presidio, which is located roughly four days north of El Paso, he had been imprisoned inside the detention facility there since September.
Yoiker Sequera, one of the three Venezuelans named in the ACLU complaint, was first identified by the virtual publishing Migrant Insider. The 25-year-old had wanted to be a hair ever since he was a child, his mother said, just like his uncle. That’s how he made a living wherever he went, in Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia. He continued to cut his hair inside the detention center and along the migrant route as he attempted last year to make his way to his family in California.
Angela Sequera claimed that her son intended to attempt to enter the country seeking asylum. They want to connect him with organized crime. Everything that’s happening is so unfair”.
Pratheek Rebala of ProPublica contributed reporting.
