One by one, men in the prison-like clothing worn by people in immigration custody sit in front of the video conference camera and point to bruises on their bodies.
Some point to their faces. Others gesture to arms, legs or torsos. Several of the bruises are quite dark.
In the video recording of their message, the eight men say that they are being held at the El Paso Service Processing Center in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and that the facility’s guards beat them on Feb. 25. They say that the guards discriminate against them because they are Venezuelan.
“In this institution, as is evident by showing my face and in the majority of our bodies, today was another day of mistreatment by the officials of this center, of which we are tired and ask for help and justice,” the first man to speak, Jesús Quintero, said in Spanish.
In the video, Quintero’s face appears swollen on one side, his upper cheek a deep shade of purple.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment from Capital & Main. (Though many ICE detention facilities are owned and operated by private prison companies, the one in El Paso, Texas, is run by ICE itself.)
The allegations come as President Donald Trump has focused his anti-immigrant rhetoric on Venezuelans and particularly on a gang called Tren de Aragua, which his administration recently labeled as a terrorist organization. His administration flew groups of Venezuelans to detain them in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and falsely asserted that they were all gang members.
More recently, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans without giving them hearings. As a result, ICE sent hundreds to El Salvador, where they have disappeared into the country’s notorious prison system.
It’s not clear from the El Paso video, which was recorded by an unidentified family member and later provided to Capital & Main, what started the beating. Ledys Isea, a Venezuelan man held in the same unit as the men in the video, later told Capital & Main that the guards were moving those in the mostly Venezuelan housing unit to eat dinner at the same time that they were moving a unit of mostly Mexican men.
Isea said that tensions had been rising in the facility, particularly because of overcrowding and the subsequent shortages in food, hygiene products and clothing. He said some of the Mexican men began jeering at the Venezuelans, calling them vulgar names. He said from there, things got “out of control.”
But, he noted, the guards attacked only the Venezuelans. Then the guards pulled many of the Venezuelans into another room and beat them, he said.
“There are companions who went into the processing room who weren’t beaten, and when they came out they were bruised,” Isea said in Spanish.
“None of the Mexicans that day were detained,” he added. “None of the Mexicans were beaten. Not a one.”
In the video recorded later that same day of some of the men asking for help and justice, Darwin Andrés Gómez Izquiel says that an official kicked him in the ear during the attack.
Miguel Bahamonde Barrio holds up his thigh to show the swelling and says officials kicked him there, too.
“We’re being victims of abuse, aggression and racism,” Bahamonde Barrio said in Spanish. “This thing that’s happening here is too inhumane because, in reality, here is supposed to be a processing center. We’re not prisoners. We’re being processed by immigration officials.”
Though immigration detention can look and feel like a prison, from a legal perspective, it is civil detention rather than criminal detention. That means ICE can hold people only if it believes they are unlikely to show up for their court cases or if they are deemed dangerous.
Several of the men in the video ask for ICE to deport them so that they won’t have to spend more time in the facility.
Many of the men recite the identification numbers attached to their immigration records on the video. Capital & Main confirmed that all of those who gave their IDs were ordered deported between one and four months prior to the alleged beating. All but one had appeared before New Jersey judges for their court hearings. The other man had his case heard in Texas.
Isea said that after the video surfaced, officials placed several of the men in solitary confinement, which he referred to as “the hole.” He said some of the men were organizing a hunger strike and that they planned to continue making videos and weren’t afraid of the consequences.
“They treat us like dogs, and we’re human beings,” Isea said. “We’re tired already. We’re tired. We’re tired of the bad treatment.”
In early March, after speaking with Isea, Capital & Main learned that he had been deported to Mexico. The Biden administration set up an agreement with Mexico to receive certain nationalities, including Venezuelans, and the Trump administration has continued to use that pathway for some deportations.
Isea’s sister, who still lives in Venezuela, said her brother does not yet have a phone but is working to save up for one and calls her when he can from borrowed phones. Some of the men from the video were deported with him.
Using their identification numbers, Capital & Main confirmed that at least two of the men in the video are no longer in ICE custody though, as of mid-March, it appeared that at least four were still at El Paso Service Processing Center.
