FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – In his first hours of freedom in the United States, Ricardo Villasmil, a 23-year-old immigrant from Venezuela, got into a taxi, asked to be taken to a hotel with the basic English he brought from his country, and he received by surprise a contingent of typical American food.
He couldn't keep up with so many
nuggets
and hamburgers that his family sent him to celebrate that he was already in the country and free.
Before going to bed, Villasmil removed the pillows from the bed because, since the beating in Caracas, he needs to sleep flat and without moving.
“They knew what they were doing.
They were torturing me.
That was torture and they knew what to do
,” he told Noticias Telemundo Investiga about the Venezuelan officials who processed him at the airport.
The country's authorities received Ricardo Villasmil in October 2021, as well as other returnees, with long interrogations, physical abuse and weeks of persecution, according to the testimony of four of them to Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
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Villasmil's wife, Daniela Vilora, who is pregnant, also suffered direct threats and gunshots.
"They signed me up and told my wife
how she felt knowing that my son was going to be born without a father
," says Villasmil.
They saw no alternative but to run away together.
At the U.S. border, Border Patrol quickly released Vilora -- it was her first asylum attempt and she was pregnant -- and he was transferred to ICE detention until he was released to pursue her case. .
They signed me up and told my wife how sorry she was to know that my son was going to be born without a father."
RICARDO VILLASMIL
Noticias Telemundo Investiga has evidence that the immigration authorities have released at least five Venezuelans, previously deported and who crossed the border again, to continue their asylum processes in freedom, in the United States.
Hugs, balloons and welcome t-shirts
Villasmil was released from the
South Texas Detention Center
, located southwest of San Antonio.
At the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, his family in the United States was waiting for him with welcome balloons and printed T-shirts for the occasion.
"Granted, the team is complete," read the jerseys.
His mother, Carolina Esparza, the architect of the showy welcome, says that God and the United States government granted them what they asked for from the day of the deportation: that their son Ricardo return to the United States, be prosecuted by the authorities and released. like the rest of his family to continue with his asylum process.
When they saw each other after eight months, they bumped into each other so hard they almost hurt each other, and they burst into tears.
Ricardo Villasmil and his wife Daniela Viloria embrace at the airport in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
February 2022Noticias Telemundo Investigates
Villasmil's deportation, which he himself recorded with his cell phone, became
an emblem of these silent expulsions of Venezuelans
.
On January 31, Noticias Telemundo Investiga revealed that the Biden government has been using the Dominican Republic to deport Venezuelans to their country and on February 5, that several of them reported that officials mistreated them upon arrival in Caracas.
The revelations caused outrage among pro-immigrant organizations, and even within the Democratic Party.
One of its longest-serving senators, Bob Menendez, called them "extremely troubling" in a Feb. 1 statement.
Joe Biden had criticized these deportations of Venezuelans through transit countries when he was a candidate for the Presidency of the country, and the
United States Government itself described Venezuela in 2021 as "an illegitimate and authoritarian regime."
[A Caribbean island is ICE's back door to deport Venezuelans]
Noticias Telemundo Investiga contacted the White House to consult its position in the case but received no response.
Villasmil maintains that, upon his arrival in Caracas, he was prosecuted by officials from the Prosecutor's Office who identified themselves as such, and officials from the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN).
"And that's where the horror movie started," he recounted.
Ricardo Villasmil shows a photograph of him with the collar he used to heal the cervical injury he suffers.
February 2022Noticias Telemundo Investigates
“I fell flat on the floor.
They tell me: 'Weren't you in the United States? Ask Biden for help
, sissy.'
When I try to get up, I try to grab strength, I can't.
The pain was unbearable and I lost consciousness.”
He also says that they put
a bag over his head
until he suffocated, they kicked his body, and they put his head between his knees for hours
:
"A person comes and grabs me by the neck and forces me, he grabs my neck to put my head between my knees, and he comes up to me and says, if you move, I'll kill you"
A person comes and grabs me by the neck and tells me: 'If you move, I'll kill you'
RICARDO VILLASMIL
He only knows that he lost consciousness and appeared free in a public hospital in the capital.
Weeks after that arrest, a doctor diagnosed him with cervical neuritis, an inflammation of the nerves around the vertebrae.
The United Nations warned in 2020 that the Venezuelan authorities use, in their political repression, stress positions for long periods of time of up to 12 hours.
And Amnesty International denounced this month that detention and violence for political reasons is systematic in the country.
[More Inequality, Human Rights Abuses, and Fewer Vaccines: The Legacy of the Coronavirus Pandemic in the Americas]
Noticias Telemundo Investiga contacted the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry with several questions about the deportees arriving from the United States, but we did not receive a response at the time of publication.
Record number of Venezuelans at the border
Villasmil, as well as other deportees, have had better luck than the first time they entered the United States: they now have the right to continue their asylum processes in freedom and to work in the country during that time.
The immigration authorities reopened their case and annulled the expulsions from the country, according to the legal team that supports them.
The legal team also pointed out that ICE used its discretion to free these immigrants who suffered a secret deportation to Caracas.
This action by the Biden Administration also comes after an insistent campaign by the organization
'A letter saves a life', which sends letters to the White House for each detainee, assists Venezuelans in ICE custody
and supports them when they are released in the United States. United with flights, legal guidance and resources.
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At the time of publishing this report, ICE had not yet responded to our questions about the releases of previously deported Venezuelans.
There are some 3,500 Venezuelans in ICE detention, according to data from this month of February provided by the federal agency to Noticias Telemundo Investiga.
And those arrested are just the tip of the iceberg of an exodus that the Biden administration has to face.
In the first three months of fiscal year 2022 alone,
the Border Patrol apprehended more Venezuelans than in the entire previous year: a total of 58,630 arrests
, according to official data.
Villasmil has been fleeing the murder of his father, the kidnapping of his mother and threats to his entire family for years, he says, for political reasons.
When he and his wife met again, surrounded by family and celebrations at the Fort Lauderdale airport, he hugged Daniela's belly.
She says that she left Venezuela again because she does not want her son to grow up like him: without a father.
