March 28, 2025 • 27 mins
On the first days of his migration journey, “Juan” posed for a photo outside a bus terminal to remember the moment. Two years and two thousand miles later, it landed him in the crosshairs of a recently-elected Trump administration determined to wage an all out war on immigrants, and on a plane to Guantánamo Bay.
Today, the story of how one Venezuelan migrant ended up inside one of the world's most infamous prisons, and what he experienced while he was there. Plus, a conversation with one of the lawyers of Mahmoud Khalil about what Trump’s crackdown on migrants means for us all.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dear listener, before we start, just a warning that suicide
is going to come up in this piece.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
One is a former migrant from Venezuela. He remembers the
day two years ago when he posed for a photograph
that would end up changing his life.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Meto.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It was September of twenty twenty two, and he and
a small group of his family members had just arrived
in Ibake, in western Colombia. It was the first days
of a long journey to the United States, where he
hoped to find work a new life, all of it
far away from the economic and political crises in his homeland.
In Venezuela, the wont Eka.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Tauna Plaza Kere Antigo.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
When the group spotted a monument of an old train
car outside the bus terminal, it felt like the perfect
spot to take a picture to document the moment. It's
an old train engine surround by colorful flowers. It's a
group of five men and one woman, all in their twenties,
and they stand there smiling at the camera. Juan sits
(01:09):
on one side of the train engine, giving a thumbs up.
He looks happy. He was happy.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Almost two years and two thousand miles later, this photo
would land one in one of the most infamous prisons
on earth that's run by the US government. It's called Guantanamo.
From Futro Media and PRX, It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Josa.
(01:45):
Today Juan's story and how the Trump administration is taking
his war on immigrants to a whole new level. Producer
Ariel Goodman has the story.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Huan is one of the one hundred and seventy seven
Venezuelan migrants that the Trump administration sent to the Guantanamo
Bay detention camp in Cuba this February.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We have thirty thousand beds in Guantanamo to detain the
worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Quan is not his real name. We're protecting his identity
for security reasons. He's a thirty year old construction worker
and a father of four. That photo, the one we
described at the top, would eventually be used by immigration
and Customs enforcement as proof that Juan was connected to
trender Awa. Tren means train in Spanish. In reality, Juan
(02:46):
says he took that photo to mark a memory with
his family and that train car. It's an antique commemorating
an old Colombian rail line built in the nineteen twenties.
But this accusation that Juan was a member of trender
AWA would ultimately place him in the crosshairs of the
newly elected Trump administration. Determined to fulfill its campaign promise
(03:06):
of waging an all out war on immigrants, Trump frequently
spoke about t AWA on the campaign trail, often repeating
false claims that the gang had taken control of neighborhoods
in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
As we speak, heavily lam Venezuela and gangs taking over
entire aprofit buildings and propping complexes in Aurora, Colorado, terrorizing
the residence.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive
order designating the gang as a quote foreign terrorist organization.
We got a hold of Juan and Venezuela, where he
was deported in February.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
He Vescuccas.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
When we spoke to him, he had just visited Marakai,
the city where he was born and raised.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Sin sing Joyani time Topuerlo at all.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
He tells me that it felt good to be back
home and to see his children for the first time
in years, But he says nothing is the same. Marakai
is the capital state of Arawa. It's called Sudan Garvin
because of its abundance of gardens. Arawa is where trend
Arawa originated in a prison in twenty fourteen and got
(04:22):
its name. It's also where Juan has always dreamed of returning.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
To Geriaita Tolment.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Juan says that his biggest dream was to own a
house in Maracai that he could hand down to his children.
But at twenty two years old, Juan was unable to
find work in his home country, so he joined the
millions of Venezuelans one in every four who have left
their country over the past seven years. In twenty seventeen,
Juan moved to Ecuador with his wife and four children.
(04:59):
They lived there for six years. Ja Juan worked in construction,
but when COVID nineteen hit in twenty twenty, Ecuador became
an early epicenter in Latin America.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Ecuador is seeing one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks
what possibly thousands did.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
More than half a million people lost their full time
jobs that year in Ecuador, and life there became untenable
for many foreigners, such as Juana. He remembers seeing Venezuelans
(05:35):
like himself, kicked out of the places they were renting
because they could no longer afford them. Their belongings tossed
on the street. That's when he decided to seek opportunities
somewhere else, this time north of Venezuela in the United States.
First he traveled through Colombia, where he took the photo
in front of that old train car. Then to the
(05:58):
Darien Jungle, the infamously dangerous stretch of rainforest that straddles
the border of Columbia and Panama.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Jodel Simple mediasutau Ba.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
I went six days without eating, he says. Most of
the time I was running to keep up with the guides.
Huan's journey continued for over a year. He ran out
of money in Costa Rica and stayed there working in
construction for a year and a half. He rode on
top of train cars with migrants from all over South
(06:42):
and Central America, ran from immigration officials, walked through forests
at night. He finally made it to the United States
in May of last year. Friends and family here instructed
(07:05):
him to do as they had done, turn himself over
to immigration authorities, where he would be processed and then
let free while his asylum case was determined and in
El Paso, Texas. Juan did just as he was told.
He felt happy he had made it across Aijata, but
(07:26):
I was wrong, he says. That was where my nightmare began.
Juan says that the ICE officials asked him questions about
his entire life. They went through his phone and found
that picture of him in front of the train, which
he says they used to connect him to Trenderrawa. That
(07:49):
and a tattoo of three stars he has on his
right arm, which they claimed was also proof that he
had ties to the gang. According to experts, though trend
Arawa doesn't use tattoos as a signifier of membership, Quan
says he got that tattoo when he was sixteen years
old because it looked like a tattoo that one of
his favorite reggaeton artists, Farruko had. According to US court records,
(08:12):
Juan has no criminal history here other than improper entry
into the country. He also provided a Venezuelan government document
to Latino USA declaring that he has no criminal history
in his country of origin.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Legas among me the policy.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I come from poverty. He says, but I have nothing
to hide. Quan was charged with a legal entry and
eventually sent to a detention center in net Baso, where
he stayed for several months. There, he says that every
day everyone in his cell block would gather around a
television to watch the news. It was how they stayed
connected to the outside world.
Speaker 7 (08:51):
It is now official CNN projects that Donald Trump has
been elected president, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and making
a political comeback like any in modern American politics.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
When the new president began threatening to send the so
called worst criminal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, fear and rumors
started to spread amongst the detainees, and one.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Night, alb Alberonier all of us.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
One by one. They called ten people by name.
Speaker 9 (09:24):
He says.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The next day he would find out in the news
what had happened to them.
Speaker 10 (09:29):
The Department of Homeland Security has released the first images
of detained migrants arriving at Guantanamo Bay. The ten people
on the flight from El Paso, Texas are suspected members
of a Venezuelan gang. The Trump administration has said the
high security prison facility used to hold Al Qaeda detainees
will now also be used for so called hardened criminals
(09:50):
who do not have proper documentation.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Juan immediately recognized the people in those images. They were
the young Venezuelan men who had been taken from the
detention center the previous night. That's when the trauma started,
(10:13):
he says. The images showed the migrants shackled from head
to toe boarding massive military aircrafts, surrounded by heavily armed guards,
headed to Guantanamo Bay, and just a few days later,
this time by the cover of night, Kuan's name was
also called. He described it as a horror movie. He
(10:46):
says that he and around fifteen other migrants were treated
like terrorists. They were shackled from the legs, hands, and waist.
He estimates that he was on the plane for eight hours,
flanked by soldiers with rifles. When they landed, they were
ushered and then shackled again into seats on a bus
with black plastic covering the windows. It felt like a kidnapping,
(11:12):
he says. He says they were told that they were
going to Miami, but instead they were taken to Guantanamo Bay.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Join King Sailor.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Kuan describes the fifteen days that followed as torture. He
wasn't given any information about what was happening or if
he would ever leave. It was a hopelessness, he says,
that made him want to die. Lawsuits against the Trump
administration that have since been filed by civil rights groups
(11:53):
include testimonies from some of the Venezuelan detainees in Guantanamo.
They detail instances of physical abuse, use invasive strip searches,
lack of medical care, and no access to legal counsel.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
Partico Domo Kwan estimates that his cell, which in place
of a mattress, had a piece of plastic, was seven
by five feet, the size of a small bathroom with
a tiny latrine.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
He passed the days screaming, pacing his cell, kicking the door,
and banging his head on the wall. He says he
felt like he was drowning. He told us that sometimes
guards would come in and chain his body to a
restraint chair for hours. A US colonel recently admitted to
The New York Times that in one single day, prison
(12:53):
staff strapped six of the Venezuelan migrants to restraint chairs
after they attempted suicide. Cierria Zier, you couldn't tell day
from night Quan explains. Juan spoke of extreme cold and
extreme heat. He says he was barely fed and felt
hungry every day. I swear, He says, it feels like
(13:25):
you've been buried and that they've thrown the dirt on
top of you, but you're still alive. The desperation was
so deep that one day he chewed on his own
tongue repeatedly in the hopes that he would bleed to death.
(13:49):
Soon before they were released, Juan says that he and
the other migrants attempted to wage a hunger strike, which
they organized by yelling to one another through the cell walls.
Juan stopped what little betting he had into the latrine
to flood his cell refuse food, and continued to spend
his days kicking the door of his cell and yelling,
(14:10):
hoping that it would call attention to his case or
bring him answers. On February twenty first, all one hundred
seventy seven Venezuelan men who were detained at Guantanamo Bay,
the first but not the last migrants sent there by
the Trump administration, were deported back to Venezuela. In this video,
(14:34):
the men, the youngest of which was nineteen years old,
are dismounting a plane surrounded by Venezuelan officials. Some smile,
one throws his hands up in the air and looks
at the sky, appearing to thank God. While the Trump
administration first accused the group of being the quote worst
(14:57):
of the worst, it later admitted in court for that
close to thirty percent of the detainees did not have
criminal records other than unauthorized entry into the United States,
and that they were considered quote low threat illegal aliens.
When Juan arrived in Venezuela, he says that he was
ten pounds lighter, he had no money or clothes other
(15:18):
than the ones that he was wearing. Now he's slowly
trying to piece his life back together. He wants to
work on what he does best, construction, but he says
that the pay is so low in Venezuela that he
practically would be doing it for free. Instead, he's considering
selling bananas to help pay the bills. Juan tries to
(15:38):
fill his days with his family, but at night, he
says he can't sleep unless he takes pills. Once he
dreamed of making it to the US. Now the memories
of it manifest as nightmares.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I assume.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
At night is when the real terror comes. He says,
I fall into a loop remembering what I lived through.
It's something I can't let go of.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
One was deported to his home country of Venezuela in February,
and just weeks later, over two hundred Venezuelans under similar
circumstances were sent from the US to another infamous prison,
this time in El Salvador. When we come back, we
dive into the new phase of Trump's war on immigrants
(16:42):
that's coming up. Stay with us, Yes, hey, we're back.
And before the break, we heard the story of jue
A Venezuelan and immigrants who spent fifteen days in Guantanamo
(17:03):
after the Trump administration accused him of being a member
of the Venezuelan gang trin Zagwa. But now Trump is
taking his war on immigrants to another level. Just a
couple of weeks ago, he in vote the Alien Enemies
Act of seventeen ninety eight. It's a wartime law. This
Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times, most
(17:25):
recently during World War Two, when it was used to
put Japanese immigrants in internment camps. By claiming that then
n Ahwa is conducting quote irregular warfare in the United States.
The Trump administration is using the Act to deport migrants
who it claims have ties to the gang, all of
this without due process, and in March it deported more
(17:47):
than two hundred Venezuelans to El Salvador's infamous mega prison secote.
To better understand all of this, we're going to speak
to Ramsey Kassim. He's professor of law at the City
University of New York. Professor Cassim has represented detainees at
Guantanamo Bay over the last twenty years. He's also one
(18:08):
of the lead lawyers defending Mahur Khalil.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Ice agents detained a leader of the Gaza Solidarity encampment
at Columbia University. Mahan Khalil is an Algerian citizen of
Palestinian descent who's a Green Card holder and a lawful
permanent resident of the United States. Immigration officials told Khalil's
lawyer his green card is being revoked.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Professor Ramsey Cassim, welcome to Latino, USA.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Thank you so much for having me Adia So, Ramsey.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
We're looking today at Trump's move to incarcerate migrants abroad,
first in Guantanamo, now in El Salvador, and we're going
to get into that in a moment. But to start off,
can you connect the dots for us? How is the
Trump administration's detention of your client Mahmour Khalil connected to
the administration's move to incarconate migrants, as civil rights groups
(19:04):
like yours are arguing in these unlawful ways.
Speaker 11 (19:08):
One way to connect the dots, Maria is to point
out that when the Trump administration decides to fly migrants
who it claims without much support, are affiliated with gangs
to Guantanamo, and when it also makes a move on
someone like Marmo Trallier, who his only offense, as far
(19:30):
as anybody can see, is that he has said things
that the government happens to disagree with in support of
Palestinian lives and rights and freedom. The through line between
those two actions is that these are essentially communications efforts,
and so when it comes to leveraging the horrible symbolism
of Guantanamo, the intended message is we are doing the
(19:53):
most hard nosed thing to quash migrants, and migration we're
sending them to and so that's a politically valuable message
that comforts the Trump Administration's political base here in the
United States, and the administration also intends to deter migrants
from coming to the United States again by leveraging and
(20:14):
mobilizing the horrific symbolic weight of Guantanamo and all the
associations with torture, with indefinite incarceration, without fair process, without trial,
without conviction for decades on end. And once again, the
people who are being brought to Guantanamo are brown and
black folks. That was the case with the nearly eight
(20:36):
hundred Sunny Muslim prisoners who were incarcerated there since nine
to eleven, and that's the case today with the LATINX migrants,
whom the administration claims are gang affiliated again without much support,
much like previous administrations claimed that the Muslim man at
Guantanamo were affiliated with terrorist groups and with mister Khalil,
(20:56):
the message is taking the harshest possible measures by targeting
a Green card holder in New York City with no
criminal convictions, and it also wants to send a message
to protesters that their speech will not be tolerated and
it will be punished. They want to silence folks who
stand up in support of Palestinians and who stand up
against genocide, and that has already backfired. Frankly, I mean,
(21:18):
you've seen Mariyap, the thousands of people who have taken
to the streets and solidarity with him and solidarity with
the Palestinian people, and also to stand up for rights
in this country to speak up.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You know what's incredible, Ramsey, is that when we first
reached out to you to talk about Guantanamo, you told
me that your last client had just been released from
Guantanamo earlier this year, and all of a sudden, you
find yourself now having to talk about Guantanamo again. So
you did represent men on Guantanamo as a result of
(21:55):
George W. Bush's post nine to eleven quote unquote war
on Terror, and back then the Bush administration justified their
indefinite detention without due process and the human rights abuses
that they endured by arguing that this was quote unquote
a new kind of warfare with a new kind of enemy.
(22:15):
And now Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act saying
this is a time of war, describing an influx of
migrants and immigrants and refugees as quote an invasion. So
what part of Trump's actions are unprecedented and what part
of them are actually part of a direct lineage to
(22:37):
Bush era policies.
Speaker 11 (22:39):
The continuity is remarkable, and everything from the visuals on
the first plane full of so called War on Terror
prisoners landed there. The US government had photographers there. There
are these notorious, infamous pictures of Muslim, black and brown
men on their knees shackled. You know, their eyes are
(23:01):
covered and they're being photographed because the point was to
message to the outside world that the United States was
responding to nine to eleven in the harshest possible way.
And so it's the same now with the Venezuelan migrants.
There were photographers on the tarmac as the men in
jumpsuits and shackles were being taken aboard a plane that
(23:22):
was going to fly them to Guantanamo. It's really just
about the politics, the messaging, and the authority that they
are invoking. It's very similar to what they did after
nine to eleven, when they claimed on all sorts of
novel grounds, that they had the authority to incarcerate anyone,
including a US citizen, as an enemy combatant quote unquote,
(23:42):
without having to charge them without having to try them
and without even having to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
What happened with El Salvador, right, is that the deportee
planes tool Salvador were already in the air when a
judge ordered that they return. The judge had issued a
verbal order in time to stop those deportations, but the
Trump administration did not comply with that order. So Ramsey,
what is your level of alarm about a president defying
(24:17):
the American court system and how much in danger are
our checks and balances in terms of what upholds our democracy?
Speaker 11 (24:26):
You know, I think that is certainly troubling that the
administration was under an order not to do something, not
to fly these mental Salvador, and that it did it anyway. Now,
one might say we are not yet in the worst
possible place, in the sense that the Trump administration's position
is not that it openly defied a court order or
(24:47):
disregarded it's making arguments about why the right people were
not aware of the judge's order at the right time.
They're making those sorts of excuses, And I only highlight
that not to excuse it, but just to distinguish it
from where we might be headed, which is a place
where the US government will just ignore or openly disregard
(25:10):
a court order and say that it's doing that. And
these are all steps towards sort of the open defiance
and disregard of judicial authority that I'm talking about. They're
all flirtations with, but we might be headed towards, and
so it's very important to take note of what's happening
and to push back.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Professor Ramsey Kassum, thank you so much for taking the
time out of your really busy schedule to speak to
us here at let you Know USA.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We appreciate it.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
Thank you so much, Maria for your work and for
this opportunity.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Don't miss the rest of my conversation with Professor Ramsey
Kassum dropping on Sunday, we go deeper into Mahmu Khalil's
case and what it signals about the right to free
speech and do process in the United States for.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
All of us.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Our episode was produced by Ariel Goodman and edited by
Andrea Lopez Gruzzado, mixing and scoring by Stephanie Lebou and
JJ Carubin. The Ladiro USA team also includes Roxanna Guire,
Julia Caruso, Felicia Romguez, Fernando Chavari, Jessica Elis, Victoria Strada, Dominiquinestrosa,
Renando Lanos Junior, Luis Luna Marta Martinez, Monica Moreles Garcia,
(26:38):
Rasha Sandoval, Lur Saudi and Nancy Trujillo, Penilee, ramidez Wal
and Bishop Maria Garcia and myself are co executive producers
and I'm your host, Marie la Posa. Join us again
on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see you
on social media. Asta la proxima note bajas chao.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the John D.
And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, working with
visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, and
funding for Latino usas. Coverage of a Culture of Health
is made possible in part by a grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Dear listener, before we start, just a warning that suicide
is going to come up in this piece.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
One is a former migrant from Venezuela. He remembers the
day two years ago when he posed for a photograph
that would end up changing his life.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Meto.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
It was September of twenty twenty two, and he and
a small group of his family members had just arrived
in Ibake, in western Colombia. It was the first days
of a long journey to the United States, where he
hoped to find work a new life, all of it
far away from the economic and political crises in his homeland.
In Venezuela, the wont Eka.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Tauna Plaza Kere Antigo.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
When the group spotted a monument of an old train
car outside the bus terminal, it felt like the perfect
spot to take a picture to document the moment. It's
an old train engine surround by colorful flowers. It's a
group of five men and one woman, all in their twenties,
and they stand there smiling at the camera. Juan sits
(01:09):
on one side of the train engine, giving a thumbs up.
He looks happy. He was happy.
Speaker 3 (01:22):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Almost two years and two thousand miles later, this photo
would land one in one of the most infamous prisons
on earth that's run by the US government. It's called Guantanamo.
From Futro Media and PRX, It's Latino USA. I'm Maria Josa.
(01:45):
Today Juan's story and how the Trump administration is taking
his war on immigrants to a whole new level. Producer
Ariel Goodman has the story.
Speaker 4 (02:05):
Huan is one of the one hundred and seventy seven
Venezuelan migrants that the Trump administration sent to the Guantanamo
Bay detention camp in Cuba this February.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
We have thirty thousand beds in Guantanamo to detain the
worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.
Speaker 4 (02:24):
Quan is not his real name. We're protecting his identity
for security reasons. He's a thirty year old construction worker
and a father of four. That photo, the one we
described at the top, would eventually be used by immigration
and Customs enforcement as proof that Juan was connected to
trender Awa. Tren means train in Spanish. In reality, Juan
(02:46):
says he took that photo to mark a memory with
his family and that train car. It's an antique commemorating
an old Colombian rail line built in the nineteen twenties.
But this accusation that Juan was a member of trender
AWA would ultimately place him in the crosshairs of the
newly elected Trump administration. Determined to fulfill its campaign promise
(03:06):
of waging an all out war on immigrants, Trump frequently
spoke about t AWA on the campaign trail, often repeating
false claims that the gang had taken control of neighborhoods
in Colorado.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
As we speak, heavily lam Venezuela and gangs taking over
entire aprofit buildings and propping complexes in Aurora, Colorado, terrorizing
the residence.
Speaker 4 (03:30):
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive
order designating the gang as a quote foreign terrorist organization.
We got a hold of Juan and Venezuela, where he
was deported in February.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
He Vescuccas.
Speaker 4 (03:48):
When we spoke to him, he had just visited Marakai,
the city where he was born and raised.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Sin sing Joyani time Topuerlo at all.
Speaker 4 (04:02):
He tells me that it felt good to be back
home and to see his children for the first time
in years, But he says nothing is the same. Marakai
is the capital state of Arawa. It's called Sudan Garvin
because of its abundance of gardens. Arawa is where trend
Arawa originated in a prison in twenty fourteen and got
(04:22):
its name. It's also where Juan has always dreamed of returning.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
To Geriaita Tolment.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
Juan says that his biggest dream was to own a
house in Maracai that he could hand down to his children.
But at twenty two years old, Juan was unable to
find work in his home country, so he joined the
millions of Venezuelans one in every four who have left
their country over the past seven years. In twenty seventeen,
Juan moved to Ecuador with his wife and four children.
(04:59):
They lived there for six years. Ja Juan worked in construction,
but when COVID nineteen hit in twenty twenty, Ecuador became
an early epicenter in Latin America.
Speaker 5 (05:08):
Ecuador is seeing one of the world's worst coronavirus outbreaks
what possibly thousands did.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
More than half a million people lost their full time
jobs that year in Ecuador, and life there became untenable
for many foreigners, such as Juana. He remembers seeing Venezuelans
(05:35):
like himself, kicked out of the places they were renting
because they could no longer afford them. Their belongings tossed
on the street. That's when he decided to seek opportunities
somewhere else, this time north of Venezuela in the United States.
First he traveled through Colombia, where he took the photo
in front of that old train car. Then to the
(05:58):
Darien Jungle, the infamously dangerous stretch of rainforest that straddles
the border of Columbia and Panama.
Speaker 6 (06:08):
Jodel Simple mediasutau Ba.
Speaker 4 (06:21):
I went six days without eating, he says. Most of
the time I was running to keep up with the guides.
Huan's journey continued for over a year. He ran out
of money in Costa Rica and stayed there working in
construction for a year and a half. He rode on
top of train cars with migrants from all over South
(06:42):
and Central America, ran from immigration officials, walked through forests
at night. He finally made it to the United States
in May of last year. Friends and family here instructed
(07:05):
him to do as they had done, turn himself over
to immigration authorities, where he would be processed and then
let free while his asylum case was determined and in
El Paso, Texas. Juan did just as he was told.
He felt happy he had made it across Aijata, but
(07:26):
I was wrong, he says. That was where my nightmare began.
Juan says that the ICE officials asked him questions about
his entire life. They went through his phone and found
that picture of him in front of the train, which
he says they used to connect him to Trenderrawa. That
(07:49):
and a tattoo of three stars he has on his
right arm, which they claimed was also proof that he
had ties to the gang. According to experts, though trend
Arawa doesn't use tattoos as a signifier of membership, Quan
says he got that tattoo when he was sixteen years
old because it looked like a tattoo that one of
his favorite reggaeton artists, Farruko had. According to US court records,
(08:12):
Juan has no criminal history here other than improper entry
into the country. He also provided a Venezuelan government document
to Latino USA declaring that he has no criminal history
in his country of origin.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Legas among me the policy.
Speaker 4 (08:30):
I come from poverty. He says, but I have nothing
to hide. Quan was charged with a legal entry and
eventually sent to a detention center in net Baso, where
he stayed for several months. There, he says that every
day everyone in his cell block would gather around a
television to watch the news. It was how they stayed
connected to the outside world.
Speaker 7 (08:51):
It is now official CNN projects that Donald Trump has
been elected president, defeating Vice President Kamala Harris and making
a political comeback like any in modern American politics.
Speaker 4 (09:03):
When the new president began threatening to send the so
called worst criminal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, fear and rumors
started to spread amongst the detainees, and one.
Speaker 8 (09:13):
Night, alb Alberonier all of us.
Speaker 4 (09:21):
One by one. They called ten people by name.
Speaker 9 (09:24):
He says.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
The next day he would find out in the news
what had happened to them.
Speaker 10 (09:29):
The Department of Homeland Security has released the first images
of detained migrants arriving at Guantanamo Bay. The ten people
on the flight from El Paso, Texas are suspected members
of a Venezuelan gang. The Trump administration has said the
high security prison facility used to hold Al Qaeda detainees
will now also be used for so called hardened criminals
(09:50):
who do not have proper documentation.
Speaker 4 (09:52):
Juan immediately recognized the people in those images. They were
the young Venezuelan men who had been taken from the
detention center the previous night. That's when the trauma started,
(10:13):
he says. The images showed the migrants shackled from head
to toe boarding massive military aircrafts, surrounded by heavily armed guards,
headed to Guantanamo Bay, and just a few days later,
this time by the cover of night, Kuan's name was
also called. He described it as a horror movie. He
(10:46):
says that he and around fifteen other migrants were treated
like terrorists. They were shackled from the legs, hands, and waist.
He estimates that he was on the plane for eight hours,
flanked by soldiers with rifles. When they landed, they were
ushered and then shackled again into seats on a bus
with black plastic covering the windows. It felt like a kidnapping,
(11:12):
he says. He says they were told that they were
going to Miami, but instead they were taken to Guantanamo Bay.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
Join King Sailor.
Speaker 4 (11:31):
Kuan describes the fifteen days that followed as torture. He
wasn't given any information about what was happening or if
he would ever leave. It was a hopelessness, he says,
that made him want to die. Lawsuits against the Trump
administration that have since been filed by civil rights groups
(11:53):
include testimonies from some of the Venezuelan detainees in Guantanamo.
They detail instances of physical abuse, use invasive strip searches,
lack of medical care, and no access to legal counsel.
Speaker 8 (12:06):
Partico Domo Kwan estimates that his cell, which in place
of a mattress, had a piece of plastic, was seven
by five feet, the size of a small bathroom with
a tiny latrine.
Speaker 4 (12:33):
He passed the days screaming, pacing his cell, kicking the door,
and banging his head on the wall. He says he
felt like he was drowning. He told us that sometimes
guards would come in and chain his body to a
restraint chair for hours. A US colonel recently admitted to
The New York Times that in one single day, prison
(12:53):
staff strapped six of the Venezuelan migrants to restraint chairs
after they attempted suicide. Cierria Zier, you couldn't tell day
from night Quan explains. Juan spoke of extreme cold and
extreme heat. He says he was barely fed and felt
hungry every day. I swear, He says, it feels like
(13:25):
you've been buried and that they've thrown the dirt on
top of you, but you're still alive. The desperation was
so deep that one day he chewed on his own
tongue repeatedly in the hopes that he would bleed to death.
(13:49):
Soon before they were released, Juan says that he and
the other migrants attempted to wage a hunger strike, which
they organized by yelling to one another through the cell walls.
Juan stopped what little betting he had into the latrine
to flood his cell refuse food, and continued to spend
his days kicking the door of his cell and yelling,
(14:10):
hoping that it would call attention to his case or
bring him answers. On February twenty first, all one hundred
seventy seven Venezuelan men who were detained at Guantanamo Bay,
the first but not the last migrants sent there by
the Trump administration, were deported back to Venezuela. In this video,
(14:34):
the men, the youngest of which was nineteen years old,
are dismounting a plane surrounded by Venezuelan officials. Some smile,
one throws his hands up in the air and looks
at the sky, appearing to thank God. While the Trump
administration first accused the group of being the quote worst
(14:57):
of the worst, it later admitted in court for that
close to thirty percent of the detainees did not have
criminal records other than unauthorized entry into the United States,
and that they were considered quote low threat illegal aliens.
When Juan arrived in Venezuela, he says that he was
ten pounds lighter, he had no money or clothes other
(15:18):
than the ones that he was wearing. Now he's slowly
trying to piece his life back together. He wants to
work on what he does best, construction, but he says
that the pay is so low in Venezuela that he
practically would be doing it for free. Instead, he's considering
selling bananas to help pay the bills. Juan tries to
(15:38):
fill his days with his family, but at night, he
says he can't sleep unless he takes pills. Once he
dreamed of making it to the US. Now the memories
of it manifest as nightmares.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
I assume.
Speaker 4 (16:02):
At night is when the real terror comes. He says,
I fall into a loop remembering what I lived through.
It's something I can't let go of.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
One was deported to his home country of Venezuela in February,
and just weeks later, over two hundred Venezuelans under similar
circumstances were sent from the US to another infamous prison,
this time in El Salvador. When we come back, we
dive into the new phase of Trump's war on immigrants
(16:42):
that's coming up. Stay with us, Yes, hey, we're back.
And before the break, we heard the story of jue
A Venezuelan and immigrants who spent fifteen days in Guantanamo
(17:03):
after the Trump administration accused him of being a member
of the Venezuelan gang trin Zagwa. But now Trump is
taking his war on immigrants to another level. Just a
couple of weeks ago, he in vote the Alien Enemies
Act of seventeen ninety eight. It's a wartime law. This
Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked three times, most
(17:25):
recently during World War Two, when it was used to
put Japanese immigrants in internment camps. By claiming that then
n Ahwa is conducting quote irregular warfare in the United States.
The Trump administration is using the Act to deport migrants
who it claims have ties to the gang, all of
this without due process, and in March it deported more
(17:47):
than two hundred Venezuelans to El Salvador's infamous mega prison secote.
To better understand all of this, we're going to speak
to Ramsey Kassim. He's professor of law at the City
University of New York. Professor Cassim has represented detainees at
Guantanamo Bay over the last twenty years. He's also one
(18:08):
of the lead lawyers defending Mahur Khalil.
Speaker 5 (18:11):
Ice agents detained a leader of the Gaza Solidarity encampment
at Columbia University. Mahan Khalil is an Algerian citizen of
Palestinian descent who's a Green Card holder and a lawful
permanent resident of the United States. Immigration officials told Khalil's
lawyer his green card is being revoked.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Professor Ramsey Cassim, welcome to Latino, USA.
Speaker 11 (18:36):
Thank you so much for having me Adia So, Ramsey.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
We're looking today at Trump's move to incarcerate migrants abroad,
first in Guantanamo, now in El Salvador, and we're going
to get into that in a moment. But to start off,
can you connect the dots for us? How is the
Trump administration's detention of your client Mahmour Khalil connected to
the administration's move to incarconate migrants, as civil rights groups
(19:04):
like yours are arguing in these unlawful ways.
Speaker 11 (19:08):
One way to connect the dots, Maria is to point
out that when the Trump administration decides to fly migrants
who it claims without much support, are affiliated with gangs
to Guantanamo, and when it also makes a move on
someone like Marmo Trallier, who his only offense, as far
(19:30):
as anybody can see, is that he has said things
that the government happens to disagree with in support of
Palestinian lives and rights and freedom. The through line between
those two actions is that these are essentially communications efforts,
and so when it comes to leveraging the horrible symbolism
of Guantanamo, the intended message is we are doing the
(19:53):
most hard nosed thing to quash migrants, and migration we're
sending them to and so that's a politically valuable message
that comforts the Trump Administration's political base here in the
United States, and the administration also intends to deter migrants
from coming to the United States again by leveraging and
(20:14):
mobilizing the horrific symbolic weight of Guantanamo and all the
associations with torture, with indefinite incarceration, without fair process, without trial,
without conviction for decades on end. And once again, the
people who are being brought to Guantanamo are brown and
black folks. That was the case with the nearly eight
(20:36):
hundred Sunny Muslim prisoners who were incarcerated there since nine
to eleven, and that's the case today with the LATINX migrants,
whom the administration claims are gang affiliated again without much support,
much like previous administrations claimed that the Muslim man at
Guantanamo were affiliated with terrorist groups and with mister Khalil,
(20:56):
the message is taking the harshest possible measures by targeting
a Green card holder in New York City with no
criminal convictions, and it also wants to send a message
to protesters that their speech will not be tolerated and
it will be punished. They want to silence folks who
stand up in support of Palestinians and who stand up
against genocide, and that has already backfired. Frankly, I mean,
(21:18):
you've seen Mariyap, the thousands of people who have taken
to the streets and solidarity with him and solidarity with
the Palestinian people, and also to stand up for rights
in this country to speak up.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
You know what's incredible, Ramsey, is that when we first
reached out to you to talk about Guantanamo, you told
me that your last client had just been released from
Guantanamo earlier this year, and all of a sudden, you
find yourself now having to talk about Guantanamo again. So
you did represent men on Guantanamo as a result of
(21:55):
George W. Bush's post nine to eleven quote unquote war
on Terror, and back then the Bush administration justified their
indefinite detention without due process and the human rights abuses
that they endured by arguing that this was quote unquote
a new kind of warfare with a new kind of enemy.
(22:15):
And now Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act saying
this is a time of war, describing an influx of
migrants and immigrants and refugees as quote an invasion. So
what part of Trump's actions are unprecedented and what part
of them are actually part of a direct lineage to
(22:37):
Bush era policies.
Speaker 11 (22:39):
The continuity is remarkable, and everything from the visuals on
the first plane full of so called War on Terror
prisoners landed there. The US government had photographers there. There
are these notorious, infamous pictures of Muslim, black and brown
men on their knees shackled. You know, their eyes are
(23:01):
covered and they're being photographed because the point was to
message to the outside world that the United States was
responding to nine to eleven in the harshest possible way.
And so it's the same now with the Venezuelan migrants.
There were photographers on the tarmac as the men in
jumpsuits and shackles were being taken aboard a plane that
(23:22):
was going to fly them to Guantanamo. It's really just
about the politics, the messaging, and the authority that they
are invoking. It's very similar to what they did after
nine to eleven, when they claimed on all sorts of
novel grounds, that they had the authority to incarcerate anyone,
including a US citizen, as an enemy combatant quote unquote,
(23:42):
without having to charge them without having to try them
and without even having to abide by the Geneva Conventions.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
What happened with El Salvador, right, is that the deportee
planes tool Salvador were already in the air when a
judge ordered that they return. The judge had issued a
verbal order in time to stop those deportations, but the
Trump administration did not comply with that order. So Ramsey,
what is your level of alarm about a president defying
(24:17):
the American court system and how much in danger are
our checks and balances in terms of what upholds our democracy?
Speaker 11 (24:26):
You know, I think that is certainly troubling that the
administration was under an order not to do something, not
to fly these mental Salvador, and that it did it anyway. Now,
one might say we are not yet in the worst
possible place, in the sense that the Trump administration's position
is not that it openly defied a court order or
(24:47):
disregarded it's making arguments about why the right people were
not aware of the judge's order at the right time.
They're making those sorts of excuses, And I only highlight
that not to excuse it, but just to distinguish it
from where we might be headed, which is a place
where the US government will just ignore or openly disregard
(25:10):
a court order and say that it's doing that. And
these are all steps towards sort of the open defiance
and disregard of judicial authority that I'm talking about. They're
all flirtations with, but we might be headed towards, and
so it's very important to take note of what's happening
and to push back.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Professor Ramsey Kassum, thank you so much for taking the
time out of your really busy schedule to speak to
us here at let you Know USA.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
We appreciate it.
Speaker 11 (25:38):
Thank you so much, Maria for your work and for
this opportunity.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Don't miss the rest of my conversation with Professor Ramsey
Kassum dropping on Sunday, we go deeper into Mahmu Khalil's
case and what it signals about the right to free
speech and do process in the United States for.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
All of us.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Our episode was produced by Ariel Goodman and edited by
Andrea Lopez Gruzzado, mixing and scoring by Stephanie Lebou and
JJ Carubin. The Ladiro USA team also includes Roxanna Guire,
Julia Caruso, Felicia Romguez, Fernando Chavari, Jessica Elis, Victoria Strada, Dominiquinestrosa,
Renando Lanos Junior, Luis Luna Marta Martinez, Monica Moreles Garcia,
(26:38):
Rasha Sandoval, Lur Saudi and Nancy Trujillo, Penilee, ramidez Wal
and Bishop Maria Garcia and myself are co executive producers
and I'm your host, Marie la Posa. Join us again
on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see you
on social media. Asta la proxima note bajas chao.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
Latino USA is made possible in part by the John D.
And Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, working with
visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide, and
funding for Latino usas. Coverage of a Culture of Health
is made possible in part by a grant from the
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
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