Border Patrol agents collect handcuffs with leg and waist chains as they transfer custody of Guatemalan nationals to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation at the El Paso International Airport, May 10, 2023. (Photo by Corrie Boudreaux for Source NM)
Content warning: This story discusses suicidal ideation.
The United States last month deported three Venezuelan men who had been held in immigration detention in New Mexico back to their home country after they successfully convinced a federal judge to block their transfer to the notorious military prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Each of the three men fled Venezuela, sought asylum from the U.S. and passed an initial Credible Fear Interview with federal asylum officers by establishing a credible fear of persecution or torture in their home countries. However, they were held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention because of a political dispute between the two countries.
The case began in September 2024 when the men first challenged the legality of their detention at the Otero County Processing center in Chaparral, N.M. with help from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico.
President Donald Trump on Jan. 29 directed the Secretary of Homeland Security and Secretary of Defense to expand the Migrant Operations Center in the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
Extension of temporary protections for Venezuelan immigrants revoked by Trump administration
Following Trump’s orders, the U.S. diverted hundreds of troops to Guantánamo to start setting up a tent city for detained migrants, according to the New York Times.
On Feb. 9, the trio’s attorneys recounted how their clients, upon seeing the news coverage of the first Guantánamo flights, personally recognized several detainees who had also been held at Otero.
U.S. District Court Chief Judge Kenneth Gonzales on Feb. 9 blocked the transfer of all three men to Guantánamo, and less than 24 hours later, the U.S. deported them to Venezuela, according to the detained migrants’ attorneys.
The case’s conclusion comes as the New Mexico Legislature debates a proposal to prohibit state agencies and local governments from entering into agreements used to detain people for violations of civil immigration law in Otero and two facilities like it.
All three petitioners on Feb. 14 voluntarily dismissed their case against Otero County Processing Center Warden Dora Castro “in light of their deportation to Venezuela.”
Nonetheless, their attorneys wrote that the damage from their unlawfully prolonged detention remains. Each of them were held for more than a year in total, and “endured dismal conditions in detention that will leave lasting scars on them and their families.”
Detention center officials placed one of the men into solitary confinement in retaliation from a hunger strike in protest of ICE’s plans to deport them to Mexico.
Venezuelan refugees detained in NM fearful of more deportations to Mexico
Detention’s emotional and psychological toll led the men to suffer depression, anxiety, loss of appetite and suicidal ideation, the attorneys wrote. One harmed himself and was admitted into a psychiatric facility in January, they wrote.
Their fears and anxiety were made worse in early February when they began to confront the threat that they could be sent to Guantánamo, the attorneys wrote.
“I fear being taken to Guantánamo because the news is painting it as a black hole… I also see that human rights are constantly violated at Guantánamo, so I fear what could happen to me if I get taken there,” said petitioner Abrahan Barrios Morales, in an affidavit attached to the petition.
The company running the migrant detention center at Guantánamo has faced critical audits and a civil rights complaint over conditions at three other facilities it runs in the U.S., according to The Guardian newspaper.
Their flight marked the first deportation flight from the U.S. to Venezuela in over a year, according to the Associated Press. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement El Paso Field Office in March 2024 paused deportation flights to Venezuela, apparently stemming from an oil sanctions dispute.
Attorneys for the trio who were held in Otero wrote in the dismissal notice that with thousands of Venezuelans held in the U.S. awaiting removal, it’s hard to imagine that they would have been put at the front of the line for deportation “if they had not filed this habeas action, and courageously challenged the executive branch’s reprehensible and legally unsupportable decision” to start shipping detained migrants to Guantánamo and holding them there incommunicado.
Another pending case aims to block the removal of 10 other men who are nationals of Venezuela, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh, are held in neighboring Arizona and Texas and fear that they’re at risk of being taken to Guantánamo.
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This post was originally authored and published by Austin Fisher from via RSS Feed. to get your news feed on Nationwide Report®.
