Havana/Four Cubans detained at the Fort Bliss military base in Texas, which also serves as an immigration prison, reported that they have been victims of beatings, torture or threats for refusing to be deported to Mexico. The sworn testimonies of the island’s immigrants are part of a letter presented this Monday by civil organizations in the United States before the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
The complaint, which brings together a total of 45 cases, all anonymous, reveals a widespread pattern of excessive use of force by officers, including abusive sexual contact, and describes the case of a Cuban named Isaac who, last September, was beaten by agents. “The guards came into my unit and told me they were going to deport me. When I asked them where, they told me they were taking me to Mexico.” When he objected, the agents left, but soon returned with more guards, who took Isaac from his cell.
“The guards hit my head” and “slammed it against the wall approximately 10 times,” “they squeezed and twisted my ankles.”
“The guards hit my head” and “slammed it against the wall approximately 10 times,” “squeezed and twisted my ankles,” and “grabbed and crushed my testicles between their fingers, which was very painful and humiliating.” As a result of the beating, Isaac “suffered severe pain behind his ears” and could not touch the left side of his head without feeling pain for about a month.
Isaac was taken to a “punishment room,” where ICE agents “told me to cooperate” and that “no matter what happened, they would take me to Mexico.” The agents handcuffed Isaac and approximately 20 other people, put them on a bus and drove them for more than an hour to the border. There, an officer warned them that if they did not want to go to Mexico, they would be sent “to a prison in El Salvador or to Africa.”
Another case is that of Benjamín, whom agents tried to expel to Mexico from Fort Bliss on two occasions. For a week, the guards pushed him to sign a document agreeing to be deported, threatening that if he didn’t, they would handcuff him, put a bag over his head, and send him away anyway. A week later, they arrived with an order from a judge approving the deportation of the Cuban to Mexico. When he asked for a copy of the ruling, the agents refused, handcuffed his hands and feet, chained him at the waist, and transported him and several other detainees on a bus to the border. There, seven masked agents without identification badges, “who looked like soldiers,” tried to intimidate him. After refusing to cross the border, Benjamin and the others were transferred back to Fort Bliss. However, upon his return, the agents continued to threaten him, something that the Cuban describes as “psychological torture.”
A third testimony is that of Abel. In his case, he testified that officers tried twice to expel him to Mexico. The Cuban refused to get on a bus the first time, but an officer grabbed him and threw him to the ground, forcing him to board the vehicle with approximately 13 other people. His injuries caused him back pain that lasted for weeks. When the bus stopped at the border, Abel and the others were greeted by officers wearing “black face masks with only a hole for the eyes.”
Upon their return, they were warned that if they refused to go to Mexico, they would be sent “to prison and then to Africa.”
The group refused to cross the border and was returned to Fort Bliss. Upon their return, they were warned that if they refused to go to Mexico, they would be sent “to prison and then to Africa.”
They eventually documented the treatment of Eduardo, who also reported the use of masked agents to force immigrants at Fort Bliss to “jump” the border and reach Mexico. “The masked men sometimes beat people to make them jump over the wall, even if they don’t want to. I’ve seen other people being beaten and forced to jump. But I didn’t jump. I don’t want to be deported to Mexico.”
“Historically, Fort Bliss served as a staging ground for cruelty and exclusion, and what we discovered at the new immigration detention camp continues this shameful legacy. People detained at Fort Bliss bravely detailed the brutality they experience, such as abusive and sexual touching by guards, exposure to raw sewage where they eat, and denial of medical care,” states the letter signed by the organizations.
The site also came under scrutiny last September by The Washington Post. The newspaper reported that a leaked internal ICE inspection found that Fort Bliss violated more than 60 federal detention standards in the first 50 days of operation. The facility, designed to house up to 2,700 migrants a month and expand to 5,000 by the end of the year, failed to properly monitor and treat the medical conditions of some detainees, lacked basic security procedures and for weeks did not provide many inmates with a way to contact attorneys or learn about their cases, according to the report.
The pace of deportations by Donald Trump’s government has grown suddenly since January and already represents a record, according to a report in the newspaper Washington Times. Last August, deported daily to more than 1,400 undocumented immigrants. Furthermore, at that time, the number of detainees in immigration centers was already close to 60,000 since Trump took office, which was another record, since during Trump’s first term (2017-2021), the maximum was more than 50,000 arrests, in 2019.
As for the deported Cubans From the United States to Mexico, 640 have arrived in that country. The official figure is short, if one takes into account that the National Migration Institute (INM) offers this data up to last July, the month in which the Mexican president, Claudia Sheinbaum, acknowledged that they have received 6,525 migrants of different nationalities.
