Maraacaibo, Venezuela (AP) – Jhoan Bastidas was deported from the United States and spent 16 days at the US Navy base in Guantanamo BayCuba, I saw the cameras and eat small meals that I left hungry.
Pastidas, 25, said at his father’s middle -class home in the western city of Maracapo, “Pastidas, 25, said,”
Three weeks after his return to Venezuela under the leadership of President Donald Trump Immigration campaignBastidas just began to understand everything-how he returned to his hometown, which was standing once in adolescence; How to earn him tattoos on his chest as a criminal; And how it became one of the few immigrants who put forward the naval base known as terrorism in housing.
Adaptation lives together
Bastidas and about 350 Venezuelan who immigrated to the United States are trying to collect their lives together after being deported to their troubled country over the past few weeks. About 180 of them spent up to 16 days at the base in Guantanamo before being transferred to Honduras by the American authorities, and from there to Venezuela by the government of President Nicolas Maduro.
It is part of White House efforts To deport a record number of immigrants in the United States illegally. The Trump government claimed that the Venezuelan who sent to the navy base were members The train is from the Araja gangThat grew up in the country of South America, but provided a little evidence to support this.
“Everything was very difficult. All of these experiences were very difficult.” You should be strong in facing all these problems, as you know, but I saw a lot of hatred. “
More than 7.7 million Venezuelan has left their homeland since 2013, when its oil -based economy has been retracted and Maduro became president. Most of them settled in Latin America and the Caribbean Sea region, but after the Covid-19 pandemic, they increased their attention on the United States
Venezuela has refused to restore its citizens from the United States for years, with limited and limited exceptions like recent trips.
During the weekend, the United States government has transferred hundreds of immigrants to Aqsa Security Prison in El Salvador After Trump called a law in wartime in the eighteenth century to accelerate the deportations of the alleged Trine de Aragoa members. However, the Trump administration has not provided any guide to support the membership of the organs.
The immigrants were transferred even when a federal judge issued an order to prevent deportation temporarily under Foreign enemies Law of 1798And, which allows the president the widest period of politics and executive procedures to accelerate the mass deportation operations.
Leave Venezuela
Pastidas left his mother and bored by Maracapo in 2018, and she is one of the most severe country crisis. When they tested their luck in Peru and then settled in Colombia, people who lived in Venezuela lost their jobs, and they formed long lines outside the semi -empty grocery stores.
Their birthplace witnessed the shutter and the entire families selling their property and moving away. The power outages for hours, which have become daily events starting in 2019, prompted more people to abandon Maracapo.
He set out to Texas in November 2023, was transferred by a brother who was promised to a car and the function of delivering food in Utah, convinced him of immigration.
Bastedas surrendered to the American authorities after arriving at the border with Mexico and was transferred to a detention facility in El Baso, Texas. He stayed there until early February, when the hands were bored one morning, to the airport and put it in a plane without being told where it was heading.
After the plane landed, passenger colleagues thought they were in Venezuela, but when he arrived at the door and only saw “GRINGOS”, Bastedas concluded that they were wrong. When Guantanamo saw written on Earth, this did not mean anything to him. This word has not heard before.
Guantanamo
When inside the cell, Bastidas said, he could never tell the time from today because its only window was a small glass plate at the top of the door looking at the building. He said that he did not see sunlight every three days for an hour, which is the time of entertainment that he was allowed to spend in what he described as a “cage.”
Pastidas said his hands and feet were restricted whenever he left his cell, including when he went to shower every three days. At some point, he and other detainees were given small gospels, and they started praying together, reading the Bible loudly and put their ears on the door to hear each other.
We used to say that the person who would have come out is God because we have not seen any other solutions. “We had no person tending to,” he added.
The US Department of Internal Security did not respond to the requests for suspension.
Trump said he was planning To send the “worst” To the base in Cuba, including Tren De Aragua members. Pastidas said that it is not part of the gang and believes that the American authorities used tattoos to classify it wrongly as a member of the criminal organization.
When he was asked about the tattoo that the authorities believed that the ruling had offended, his father withdrew from the white T -shirt and pointed to two black stars, eight points, each on one side of the chest, below the collarbone.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit trying to prevent further transfers to Guantanamo on the pretext of cruelty by the guards and attempts to commit suicide by at least three people detained there.
Bastidas and other Venezuelan He returned to Venezuela from Guantanamo On February 20. Armed Intelligence Service Agents dropped them in their homes.
Bastidas spent the next two weeks at rest. Then work began in the Hatu Dog situation.
Return home
The facades of abandoned stores and homes are located everywhere in Maraacaibo, which was once magnet for immigrants looking for good -wage jobs in and around the oil fields around and around. But corruption, mismanagement, US economic sanctions in the end witnessed that production – and the population – is steadily decreased.
Few people may know Bastidas by name in his diverse hometown, but in practice, everyone in Maraacaibo knows a migrated person. Therefore, the Venezuelan transfer news to Guantanamo was shared indefinitely on social media and WhatsApp, which led The complex crisis He pushed them to migrate in the first place.
Bastidas tends to faith to ignore noise and move forward.
He said: “I see it as a kind of test in which the Lord put me.” “He has another purpose for me. It was not for me (in the United States), and I kept there (in detention) for some reason.”
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Salomon mentioned from Miami.