He wears an orange prison uniform and a collar that supports his neck.
This is how Ricardo Villasmil responds to the video call from an immigration detention center in Texas.
This 23-year-old Venezuelan says he suffers from severe cervical pain as a result of the mistreatment he received from the Venezuelan authorities when he was deported from the United States.
“I told them to please help me, that I couldn't get up, but they just looked at me and said: don't you come from the United States?
Ask Biden for help now! ”, He recounts about his arrival in Venezuela.
"In the midst of so much harassment,
I simply lost consciousness
."
Villasmil was one of dozens deported to Venezuela through the Dominican Republic.
Without diplomatic relations with the Maduro regime, US immigration authorities are using third countries, such as the Caribbean island or Colombia, to expel Venezuelan migrants, as revealed by Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
This practice, established during the Trump Administration, has been condemned by pro-immigrant organizations, and Democratic Senator Bob Menéndez has described it as "extremely worrying."
Ricardo Villasmil speaks from an ICE detention center with a collar due to the injuries caused when he was deported to Venezuela.Noticias Telemundo / Via video call
Noticias Telemundo Investiga spoke with three deportees who reported that, upon arrival in Venezuela,
they were interrogated and victims of violence and persecution by Venezuelan officials
.
They claim that they were treated like this at all times because they were deported from the United States.
They all clandestinely left the country again and are now looking for a new opportunity to convince the United States why they should be given asylum.
Unsuccessfully, Noticias Telemundo Investiga tried to obtain the version of the Government of Nicolás Maduro.
[Biden expels Venezuelans with the same deportations he denounced as stealthy and without compassion]
"They said he was an infiltrator from the United States"
Villasmil, who was deported via two commercial flights in October 2021, says his ordeal started all over again upon arrival at the Maiquetía airport, which serves Caracas, when officials questioned him.
Venezuelan Ricardo Villasmil recorded this video while being expelled from US territory. Cedida a Noticias Telemundo
“They said that I was being an infiltrator to pass information from the Maduro government to the United States, that the United States was financing my stay in Venezuela to pass information to him,” he recounts three months later with a collar protecting his cervical vertebrae.
The young man says that
they made him place his head between his knees
: “I was in that position for more than seven hours.
They poured cold water on me (...) It was like not leaving marks.
They hit me in the head, they drowned me.”
At one point he fell to the ground and the jokes began: “You can't stand anything, you were detained for four months in the United States, hold on” and “You don't come from the United States?
Ask Biden for help now,” she recalls.
The Biden Government is using transit countries to deport Venezuelans to their country
Feb. 1, 202201:36
“We welcome you with the same thing that happened to you”
Two other immigrants, who asked Noticias Telemundo Investiga not to reveal their names for fear of consequences in their country, recounted similar situations upon their arrival in Venezuela as deportees.
One of them explained that he was persecuted for days, mistreated and still has injuries months later.
Another assures that the first thing the officials told him was that they would "welcome him to the country" with the same beating that left him badly wounded years ago when he was detained for political reasons.
Villasmil lost count of the hours under arrest, until he says he lost consciousness: "I couldn't take it anymore and I fainted."
He woke up in a public hospital, apparently free, and some time later, a doctor diagnosed him with cervical neuritis due to that abuse.
“They poured cold water on me.
It was like not leaving marks.
They hit me in the head, they drowned me.”
ricardo villasmil, deported to venezuela
He was reunited with his partner in Venezuela, Daniela Viloria, but according to them, groups organized and financed by the government, also known as collectives, had been looking for them for weeks.
Until they threatened him and Daniela, already pregnant, at gunpoint in the middle of the street.
“He pointed a gun at me and they ask Daniela how she feels (knowing) that her son is going to grow up without a father.
From then on I thought: I cannot allow my son to be in the same way that I grew up… without my father”, he recalls tearfully.
Villasmil fled Venezuela due to
the murder of his father in 2008 and the persecution of the rest of his family for years for his opposition
to the Chavista government.
His mother, his stepfather and the rest of the brothers did manage to start their asylum process in the United States and are free.
Venezuelan immigrant Carolina Esparza shows a photo of her son Ricardo, 22, the only member of the family to be deported by ICE after requesting asylum. Damià Bonmatí
Due to direct threats, Villasmil left the country again and once again sought asylum in the United States.
This time, along with his pregnant wife, he crossed the Mexican-American border and was stopped by the Border Patrol.
They separated them.
“I said: I am pregnant, it is my husband.
And the Border Patrol's voice said 'I don't care, I don't care, it doesn't matter, you enter as single adults,' Daniela Viloria, 24, who fled Venezuela with her husband Ricardo, told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
She was released by the immigration authorities to continue her asylum process in freedom.
He
remains in the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE)
with the hope that, this time, officials will consider the political persecution that he says he suffers in Venezuela to be true.
By video call, he recounted the fear that he experienced when he arrived deported to his country, with details that he avoided giving when he was still in Venezuelan territory and spoke for the first time with Noticias Telemundo Investiga, in December 2021.
“I was willing to spend as long as it was in detention”
Ricardo Villasmil is not the only Venezuelan deportee looking for a new opportunity in the United States.
They all have in common that they
were expelled under that secret process, dressed in civilian clothes, on commercial flights
, with ICE agents without visible identification and through the Dominican Republic.
The tickets of a deportee first to the Dominican Republic and then to Venezuela.
ICE told us that it does not have contracts with commercial airlines. Roberto Mardini / Ticket assigned to Noticias Telemundo
During the last fiscal year, ICE deported, on average, one Venezuelan every two days, according to figures that the agency provided to Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
Immigration attorney Elio Vázquez emphasizes that, although these Venezuelans already have deportation on their backs, they still have an option to stay in the United States.
In an interview with Noticias Telemundo Investiga at the end of December 2021, he said that he can fight for a
"cancellation of deportation because his life is in danger
. "
Vázquez does not represent Villasmil but he does represent several Venezuelans in detention.
[How the secret deportations of Venezuelans via the Dominican Republic differ from expulsions to Colombia]
Michael Linares, a 35-year-old Venezuelan who left his country for political reasons, was also deported that way and has also crossed the border again in search of a second chance.
Linares narrates that the Border Patrol agents were surprised when he said that he was deported by the Dominican Republic, as if they were unaware that this was happening.
He spent five days in an ICE detention center, but this time he was released.
He will be able to continue in freedom with his asylum process in the United States.
Venezuelan Michael Linares is reunited with his family after seven months. Cedida a Noticias Telemundo
“I was willing to spend whatever time it was in detention, really.
Because the fear I have of returning to my country is terrible.
And now I feel happy to be with my wife, with my daughter, with my family,” says Linares, reunited with his family, after more than half a year apart and giving hope to other compatriots.
“We ask that these cases be reopened”
The Venezuelan community in the United States is mobilizing for their compatriots.
Organizations like 'A letter saves a life' is supporting deportees who try again.
"We do not want
a Venezuelan brother to die because this country mistakenly deported him to Venezuela
without taking into account the highly risky situations for the integrity and life of Venezuelans," its founder, Edison Calderón, told Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
[Trinidad and Tobago is ICE's back door to deport Venezuelans]
Calderón stressed that the United States is among the dozens of nations that do not recognize the Maduro government as legitimate.
"We ask that these cases be reopened, taken into account, studied very meticulously," added this Venezuelan with asylum already granted.
"They return to the United States because we have no other option to protect our lives."
The State Department, in charge of US foreign relations, considers Venezuela to be "an illegitimate and authoritarian regime" whose authorities commit crimes against humanity.
Venezuelans who are deported face a bleak future."
Bob Menendez, Democratic Senator
Precisely for this reason, these deportations through third countries have raised criticism among the Democrats themselves.
Sen. Bob Menendez, who chairs the committee that oversees foreign relations, this week called them
"extremely troubling
. "
"Under Maduro's cruel regime, Venezuelans who are deported face a bleak future and in many cases suffer harsh consequences for seeking political asylum in the United States," Menendez said in a statement.
Joe Biden, during the 2020 presidential campaign,
condemned this ICE practice in a tweet
.
Noticias Telemundo Investiga contacted the White House, without response, to find out its position regarding the deportation of Venezuelans, now that it presides over the federal administration.
