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