A Los Angeles construction worker of Vietnam was one of 13 immigrants awakened by fighting equipment guards around 2:30 a.m. a day in a Texas detention center, chained, forced on a bus and said they would be expelled in Libya, two of the prisoners said.
“It was very aggressive. They were not allowed to do anything,” said Tin Thanh Nguyen, lawyer for the man of Los Angeles, whom he did not identify for fear of reprisals.
Libya, the politically unstable country in North Africa, is assaulted by “terrorism, unploded land mines, civilian disorders, kidnapping and armed conflict”, according to the US State Department. Human rights groups have documented inhuman conditions in detention establishments and migrant camps, including torture, forced work and rape.
The construction worker, who was sentenced by the file, had lived in the United States for decades and has a woman and a teenager. He was arrested after appearing during an annual immigration registration in a Los Angeles office two months ago, then took place in various detention establishments before arriving at South Texas Ice Processing Center in Pearsall.
Early in the morning of May 7, it was placed on the bus of the detention establishment in the south until the base of Lackland Air Force was probably. From there, he and the rest of the group were seated for hours on the Tarmac in front of a military plane in the dark before dawn, influenced what was going to happen. Men are from Laos, Vietnam, Myanmar, Mali, Burundi, Cuba, Bolivia, Mexico and the Philippines, said lawyers. No one came from Libya.
“My client and the other bus men were silent,” said Nguyen in court files. “My client was extremely frightened.”
The plane hatch was open. Military staff collapsed and out, seeming to bring supplies and feed the plane. The photographers positioned themselves in front of the military planes.
“Suddenly, the bus begins to move and return to the detention center,” said Johnny Sinodis, lawyer for another detainee, a Philippin who grew up and went to university in the United States and was also sentenced by criminal.
The American district judge Brian E. Murphy, in the Massachusetts, had issued a warning to the administration to stop any immediate dismissal to Libya or to any other third country, as this would violate an order from the previous court that officials must provide the detainees with regular procedure and an opinion in their own language. Lawyers had rushed to obtain the order after media reports confirmed what their customers had told them: the moves in Libya seemed imminent.
Sinodis said his client and others had been returned to the detention unit and placed in isolation for 24 hours.
In his declaration, he said that his client had spoken to a Mexican and Bolivian national who was part of the group. Everyone had been informed that their country of origin would accept them, but the officials have always said that they were going to send them to Libya.
It’s been a week since the incident, and lawyers have said they are still fighting to prevent their customers from the deportations in a third country.
The Trump administration expelled hundreds of mainly Venezuelan men in a Salvador prison, invoking a law in wartime to quickly withdraw members of the accused gangs. Their deportation has attracted immediate challenges and has become the most controversial part of the repression of immigration. Officials also sent people to Panama who were not from this country.
This month, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Rwanda said in an interview on television that he was in talks with US officials to take expelled migrants.
We do not know how Libya has become a possible destination for immigrants. Two governments claim power in the country. The government of national unity based in Tripoli has denied an agreement with the Trump administration. The government of national stability, based in Benghazi, has also rejected the information according to which deportees are needed.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said on Tuesday that it had information that at least 100 Venezuelans detained in the Salvadorian megaprison were not informed that they were going to be expelled in a third country, did not have access to a lawyer and were unable to contest the dismissal.
“This situation raises serious concerns about a wide range of rights that are fundamental to the United States and international law,” the United Nations High Rights High Commissioner said in a statement. “The way in which some individuals have been held and expelled – including the use of chains on them – as well as the degrading rhetoric used against migrants, has also been deeply disturbing.”
Sinodis said his client has already been in detention for months and that he was told that he would be expelled in the Philippines at the end of April. But this month, he was transferred from the Northwest Ice Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, Texas. An officer of Tacoma told him that the decision to move him there came from the “headquarters”, according to court documents.
On May 5, he was to be questioned by two American immigration and customs agents in Texas. He expected to learn his expulsion date. Instead, they gave him a document from a page that said he would be expelled in Libya. He was shocked, said Sinodis.
The man asked the officers if there was something he or his lawyer could do to avoid this. They said no.
Nguyen said that his client, who does not speak English fluently, had a similar experience on the same day. The police gave him a document in English which, according to them, would allow him to be free in Libya. He doesn’t even know where Libya is and refused to sign the document. The police told him that he would be expelled whatever he does.
The next day, Sinodis said, his client’s commissioner and telephone accounts were zero.
Sinodis finally reached an officer of the detention center who said to him: “It’s crazy”, questioned about Libya. His client must have heard badly, he said. But his client, who grew up on the west coast, speaks the English fluently.
Then on May 7, when things took place, the lawyer reached another officer of the establishment, who said that he had no information that the man went to Libya and sent him back to an officer in Tacoma. A supervisor minimized the situation.
“I can assure you that it is not an emergency because the urgency does not exist,” said the supervisor, according to court documents.
Shortly afternoon that day, an officer of the detention center who identified himself as Garza called and told him that he was examining him, but so far had “no explanation” to explain why his client was said that, but he could not guarantee that this did not happen.
Less than an hour later, his client called to tell him that he was taken to an air base. He said that when he had been removed from his cell early in the morning, he saw the same two officers who interviewed him and asked him to sign the papers.
“He asks the officers:” Are we still going to Libya? ” Sinodis said. “They said yes.”
California Daily Newspapers
