HAVANA — Biking on the wrong side of the road. Crossing the Rio Grande on foot. Shoplifting at Target.
These are the arrest records for some of the 178 Venezuelan migrants who were detained this month in Guantanamo Bay – the U.S. Navy base in Cuba notorious for imprisoning terrorism suspects in connection to the 9/11 attacks.
In January, the Trump administration announced it would expand capacity at the base so it could hold up to 30,000 migrants. Officials said the “worst of the worst” would be detained there, including members of the feared Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
But a Miami Herald review of 18 cases found that six of the migrants appear to have no previous record, and an additional five were only charged with illegal entry into the U.S. and sentenced to time served. Several were detained during scheduled appointments with border authorities for those seeking asylum or legal entry, relatives of detainees said, or never spent time in the U.S. outside of detention. Only two were convicted of felonies – one for illegal reentry into the U.S. and the other for conspiracy to transport undocumented immigrants. Another faced felony charges for driving undocumented passengers and evading arrest but wasn’t convicted. At least one of the 178 detainees is 19 years old.
“If the administration is looking for the worst of the worst,” said Leonard Morales, a Texas-based criminal defense attorney, referring to a man he represented who was charged with a felony and sent to Guantanamo, “this is more the mundane of the mundane.”
Since early February, government agencies have declined to release the names of the detainees. Relatives have not known if their loved ones were in Venezuela, in another detention facility, or Guantanamo.
“I’m here talking with you, but my mind is over there thinking, what are they doing?” Doris Arape told reporters last week, after she recognized her 21-year-old son’s curly hair in government photos of the first arrivals at the naval base. “If he has eaten, if he drank water, if they hit my son, if they hurt him, if he’s alive.”
On February 20, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement flew 177 detainees from Guantanamo to Honduras. From there, the Venezuelan government transported them to their home country.
Some of the men described the harrowing conditions they faced to their relatives and to Herald reporters. They launched a five-day hunger strike in the prison, abstaining from food and water in protest, one man said. On Monday, CNN reported that the Trump administration has halted plans to use tent camps to house detainees in Guantanamo over concerns they might not be up to national detention standards.
They were the first immigrants to be detained in Guantanamo under Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
They will likely not be the last.
Federal officials said in court filings that the majority of men were held in a prison used for suspected terrorists, and that U.S. Army military police served as guards. One man told the Herald they were left in single cells for nearly their whole time in detention.
“We spoke from cell to cell,” Yoiner Jose Purroy Roldan, 21, recalled. “And prayed to God to help us.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not confirm any names nor respond to Herald questions about what criteria the government is using to send migrants to Guantanamo or its plans for people sent there. All the men had final deportation orders, an agency spokesperson told the Herald, adding that “all of these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally.”
Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article300729484.html#storylink=cpy
By CLAIRE HEALY and SYRA ORTIZ BLANES/Miami Herald
