‘It’s hard to explain, but I thought I was going to die’

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They drank water from a toilet tank. They begged for food, for medical attention; one pleaded for sanitary pads. Many were transported to facilities far from family and lawyers. They didn’t know what time it was, or what day. 

The Light collected the testimonies of five immigrants from the Greater New Bedford area who spent time in federal detention in recent months, as well as the account of a sixth detainee in New Hampshire, provided by a family member.

They are Yury Melissa Aguiriano-Romero, a Honduran asylum-seeker recently released on bond after 71 days in detention; Andrés De León Castro, a Guatemalan man recently deported despite being in the asylum process; Jhovani Duvan Leiva Cornejo, a Salvadoran man detained at the Port of New Bedford after returning from work on a commercial fishing vessel; Emerson Garcia DosSantos, a Brazilian man deported and forced to leave behind a wife battling brain cancer; Juan Francisco Méndez, whose arrest went viral when agents smashed his car window; and Marvin Yobani Chitic Us, a dialysis patient awaiting deportation in prison in Batavia, New York.

As of Aug. 26, more than 50 Greater New Bedford area immigrants have been confirmed detained by The Light since President Donald Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20. Of those, seven have been confirmed deported. Five have pleaded guilty to illegal re-entry in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. At least three have been released from federal detention, often on bond while awaiting further court action. The rest remain scattered in detention facilities across the country.

The Light’s sources described conditions in Burlington that included being confined to windowless rooms for 24 hours a day, limited food and drink, days without access to water for washing, and pressure to sign deportation papers. County jails in New England, where immigrants were held with the general inmate population, were somewhat more humane than in ICE-run facilities, they said. By contrast, ICE detention centers in the region and in states like Texas and Louisiana were described as harsher, marked by neglect, hunger, and guards unconcerned with detainees’ dignity — at least once even mocking a detainee after a medical episode. Deportation flights added further strain, with detainees spending hours shackled on transport planes with little to eat or drink, forced to use lavatories while chained and escorted by guards. 

Officials defend transfers to other detention centers as necessary when local facilities reach capacity, while advocates say the practice sends detainees to places with fewer protections and less oversight.

“Human rights are human rights, and belong to all human beings,” said Gerald L. Neuman, a professor of international, foreign, and comparative law at Harvard Law School. “There is no difference between citizens and non-citizens in that regard.”

On paper, the United States has ratified binding international human rights treaties that guarantee safe and dignified conditions in detention, Neuman explained. But when it comes to accountability, the gap between principle and practice widens. Proving violations is difficult. With little to no evidence emerging from inside detention centers, testimonies of those who endured detention are the only window into what actually happens beyond the walls.

‘Burlington was hell’

On a recent afternoon in New Bedford, Yury Melissa Aguiriano-Romero sat on her sister’s deck while her youngest child dozed in a hammock nearby. Downstairs, relatives prepared for a church service in her honor — the third in as many days since her release on Aug. 12, after 74 days in ICE custody. 

A 36-year-old asylum seeker from Honduras, Aguiriano-Romero fled in 2021 with her husband, Victor Emilio Murillo-Avila, and two of their children. A political activist back home, she says she endured years of harassment from rival political partisans that included sexual assault, the murder of her brother, and a knife attack on her husband. Neither of the couple has a criminal record in Massachusetts.

On June 3, ICE detained Aguiriano-Romero after she appeared for a check-in in Framingham under the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program. She said many of the other women in the cell received the same message she did to come in the same day.

Yet what awaited her and others at the Burlington ICE field office was a new ordeal.

“It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to go through,” she said. “Burlington was a nightmare.”

At the facility, Aguiriano-Romero said, time ceases to exist. There are no windows, no beds, and no way to tell day from night. Whenever detainees asked guards what time it was, “they refused to tell us,” she said.

Personal hygiene was difficult to maintain. Sanitary pads for menstruation were scarce. With only three available for the 19 women in her cell, they had to divide them, she said. Women often had to wear the same one for days before being allowed a new one. 

The lack of basic necessities — even hand soap — combined with the constant cold, eroded Aguiriano-Romero’s strength.

“Days without washing ourselves,” she said. “I suffer from migraines and I begged and begged for medicine. Not once did they give me a pill.”

She said they received three meals a day. In the mornings, guards distributed a cup of oatmeal and a small cup of water to mix it with. Lunch and dinner were pre-packaged microwave meals of chicken and potatoes. But in a sworn affidavit provided to U.S. District Court Massachusetts, she said that at times detainees only received crackers for food.

One Saturday during her time in Burlington, guards distributed cold ham and cheese sandwiches for the detainees, a cherished commodity in the prison, she said. 

“I took one part and ate it for breakfast,” she recalled, the memory bringing on tears. “Another for lunch, one more for dinner. The final piece I saved for the next day.”

Aguiriano-Romero said most of the food made her gag and she got to a point where she was unable to eat for five days. Other detainees began to worry about her. A Brazilian woman named Erika pleaded with guards for a ham and cheese sandwich just for Aguiriano-Romero.

“One day, I remember her running toward me holding the sandwich, shouting ‘Yury, I got it!’ and she gave it to me, just for me to eat,” Aguiriano-Romero said. 

The Burlington ICE office, the headquarters for the agency’s Boston Area of Responsibility which includes all six New England states, is one of 25 Enforcement and Removal Operations field offices in the country. It is meant to function primarily as an administrative site for paperwork, immigration check-ins, and a short-term detention site for detainees to stay for hours. In recent months, ICE has been keeping recent detainees there for days at a time, 11 in Aguiriano-Romero’s case. 

Aguiriano-Romero said the space was never cleaned except for one time, just before “two men with suits and ties” inspected the facility. “During our time there,” she recalled, “that was the only time they cleaned the cell.”

On Aguiriano-Romero’s third day there, June 5, U.S. Reps. Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton visited the facility and spoke outside it afterward.

According to publicly available building plans from the Burlington Building Department, there are two large cells on the facility’s first floor segregated by gender, as well as two smaller segregated rooms for juveniles. ICE has not disclosed the Burlington facility’s occupancy capacity, but claims of inhumane conditions from former detainees and lawyers have led advocates to protest outside the building. 

Emerson Garcia DosSantos spoke with The Light from his parents’ home in Ipatinga, Minas Gerais, Brazil, about conditions in Burlington and elsewhere in ICE detention. He signed deportation papers in mid-June.

“Burlington was hell,” Garcia DosSantos said in Portuguese. “Good treatment does not exist there.”

ICE agents detained Garcia DosSantos in Fall River on June 8, as he was picking up other men for a painting job. At the time, he was the sole earner in the New Bedford home he shared with his wife, Erica Hartman DosSantos, a U.S. citizen who was diagnosed with brain cancer in November. 

He had previously faced misdemeanor charges in Lynn District Court for operating a vehicle without a license and a headlight violation. Both charges were dismissed in August 2024.

Garcia DosSantos was held at Burlington for most of one day before a transfer. He recounted being placed in a cell crowded with other detainees, all of them still in handcuffs. He said the guards didn’t remove the handcuffs until they had complained for some time. He said they did not receive food for six or seven hours. And when they did, it was a pre-made microwave dinner with small portions of mac and cheese, potatoes, and stewed meat.

“They also gave us a thin [Mylar] blanket in case we wanted to sleep,” he said. “I never did.”

He said detainees had no access to a shower and a total absence of privacy.

“There was a camera filming us using the toilet,” he said. “The treatment one gets there is only for criminals. 

“There are no criminals there,” he continued. “It was just honest people trying to live their lives they brought in.”

Marvin Yobani Chitic Us is a dialysis patient awaiting a kidney transplant. He was arrested on May 12, on his way to an early-morning shift at Oceans Fleet in New Bedford, and brought to the facility. 

Us does not have a criminal record in Massachusetts.

He told the staff multiple times that he needed treatment, showing his swollen hands as evidence of toxins building up in his body. 

“I had to beg them to take me,” Us said. The following day, he said, they took him to a hospital in Boston for dialysis therapy.

Andrés De León Castro, a Guatemalan man working at NORPEL, a seafood processing plant on Fish Island in New Bedford, was deported on July 12. His work permit contained the code for individuals in the asylum process who are authorized to work. He had been arrested in Fairhaven in May and spent 36 hours in Burlington. 

Castro does not have a criminal record in Massachusetts.

“Agents treated me like a dog,” Castro said in K’iche’ through a Spanish interpreter. “They told me I was not allowed to talk or move.”

He said he and other detainees were left in a freezing room without food or water. “When we complained, they told us that’s what we deserved.”

Castro said agents pressured him to sign a self-deportation order. 

“I didn’t want to sign, and they yelled at me, telling me I had to,” he said. “It’s hard to explain, but I thought I was going to die.”

After he signed, Castro said he was shackled at the ankles, torso, and wrists and placed in a van to Plymouth County Correctional Facility. For the nearly two months that followed, as he awaited deportation, he often thought back to that ride and to the driver who spoke to him. 

“He told us, ‘Don’t be sad. We are just here doing our job. It’s the government that makes the decisions.’”

The conditions inside Burlington first received public attention after the release of Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Milford High School student arrested by ICE in May and detained there for six days. He described sleeping on a concrete floor and not having access to showers.

The allegations of harsh conditions prompted the June 5 visit by U.S. Reps. Auchincloss and Moulton.

“Several people were staying in Burlington much longer than expected, and certainly much longer than they should be,” said Neesha Suarez, deputy chief of staff for Moulton. “We are very concerned about that, obviously, given that it’s not meant for detention.”

Suarez said Moulton reported that the cells had no windows or clocks, but each contained a toilet and a sink. He did not see the showers himself, Suarez added. When he and Auchincloss asked about them, agents explained that there was a shower in the employee bathroom, and detainees would be taken there to bathe.

“They were expecting to see a processing facility meant for short-term use — so they expected to see benches,” said Suarez. “What they weren’t expecting was to see a lot of people in the rooms, seemingly having slept there, as indicated by the Mylar blankets.”

Suarez said Moulton’s visit in June was a surprise, with ICE notified just 45 minutes in advance. She added that as a congressman, Moulton reserves the right to visit the facility again, but noted that things will be more complicated moving forward.

“ICE has updated its policy since Seth and Jake went, making it a bit more challenging for members to visit field offices,” Suarez said. “Now they’re supposed to schedule seven days out.”

Suarez said members of Congress have been in contact with ICE in Burlington and the agency said it stopped holding detainees there for extended periods shortly after the congressmen’s visit.

“If people are processed so quickly through Burlington, they’re probably not going to Plymouth, they’re probably being sent to like Louisiana, Texas, places that are going to be harder to get back from,” said Suarez. “So it is definitely like a double-edged sword right now.”

Suarez said the concern is that if ICE carries out another large-scale immigration enforcement operation — like Operation Patriot in May — the agency could again hold detainees in Burlington for extended periods. “They’ll have another problem of too many people and nowhere to put them.”

“The facilities that Congressman Moulton and I saw are not facilities that anybody should be spending six days in,” Auchincloss said in a statement to The Light. “We know that these officers are trying to uphold federal law and operate professionally, but they’re not being supported properly by this administration.”

He added that President Trump has chosen to politicize immigration rather than work with Congress on bipartisan immigration reform and providing resources for processing, detention, deportation, and naturalization. “He’s trying to sow fear amongst Americans to turn Americans against each other, to distract from a series of disastrous economic policies,” he said.

On Aug. 20, The Light emailed ICE detailed questions about cleanliness, health care, hygiene, food quality, and detainee treatment at Burlington and other facilities, but the agency did not respond.

Rights on paper, abuses in practice

Under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by the United States in 1992, anyone under arrest is guaranteed humane treatment, the right to challenge detention before a court, and the presumption against pretrial custody. 

The Covenant, one of two treaties created to give the aspirational Universal Declaration of Human Rights legal force, grants these protections on paper, explained Neuman, the Harvard law professor. In practice, enforcement is elusive.

“The United States, in various ways, stays away from having binding international resolutions of its human rights violations,” Neuman said. “There is no direct way of bringing into court the claim that the United States is violating this treaty, and the reason for that is that the treaty was ratified as what’s called a non-self-executing treaty in the United States.”

In international law, that means the treaty does not automatically apply in U.S. courts. Congress must pass legislation to make it enforceable. Without that step, individuals cannot rely on it, even though it binds the country under international law.

Even more “domestic” systems have considerable limitations. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based in Washington, D.C., is charged with promoting and protecting human rights across the Americas and can receive petitions alleging U.S. violations.

On July 24, the commission held a hearing on what it described as widespread and escalating abuses under the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Representatives of the U.S. government were present, as were groups that work with migrants, asylum seekers, and immigrants. The advocates detailed mistreatment in detention centers and other violations on U.S. soil.

“We are exhausting our domestic legal remedies, but the rule of law itself is under attack,” said Erik Crew, staff attorney at the Haitian Bridge Alliance, urging the commission to use every mechanism at its disposal to demand transparency. “The U.S. continues to refuse to align its domestic law with international human rights laws, and it avoids compliance with treaties and courts that demand accountability.”

Government representatives responded to questions by pointing to “robust protections” for detainees under the agency’s National Detention Standards, which they said are “periodically updated and available online,” along with DHS data on detainees.

The latest revision of the National Detention Standards requires facilities to maintain proper temperature, air and water quality, and cleanliness, and to ensure detainees receive nutritious meals and access to recreation.

In a press release after the hearing, participating advocacy groups described these representatives’ responses as evasive. “The comments by the government representatives failed to fully address or adequately respond to any of the significant instances of severe human rights abuses that were outlined by our organizations and supported by lengthy evidence.”

Beyond Burlington: the Northeast

After Burlington, detainees are often transported to detention centers across the country, each transfer a kind of roulette, with conditions varying between county jails, ICE facilities in New England, and in southern states.

Juan Francisco Méndez spent 31 days in the Strafford County House of Corrections in Dover, New Hampshire, after his arrest. 

Nearly three months after an immigration judge ordered his release, Méndez and his wife, Marilú Domingo Ortiz, sat in their darkened living room, as pink-tinged sunlight filtered through heavy curtains. The light evoked memories for Méndez.

“We never saw the sun,” he said in Spanish. “Sometimes a ray of light would reflect on the wall, and men would sit in it just to feel the memory of heat on their skin.”

Méndez recalled the moments when it was his turn to sit in that reflection.

“It felt like your body was finally getting what it needed,” he said. “Your body feels the heat, but it’s only a reflection. It’s not enough.”

Méndez removed a drawing he made of his cell in Strafford from a yellow paper folder. He shared a block with 40 men, which included two floors of 10 two-bed cells and 15 men sleeping outside the cells. Each was given a mattress about 3 inches thick, three blankets and a heavier cover, but no pillow, he said. The cold still seeped through, especially at night, when guards would switch on the air conditioning. 

“Sometimes we used toilet paper to cover the vents, to let in less cold air,” Méndez said.

The cold and the lack of sleep made men sick. But Méndez said few reported their symptoms after an Ecuadorean detainee who complained of stomach pains was taken from the unit and held in isolation for three days.

“When he came back, he said he’d never seen a doctor, and he wasn’t allowed to speak to his family,” Méndez recalled. “After that, we were too scared to ask for anything if we got sick.”

Jhovani Duvan Leiva Cornejo, a 27-year-old from El Salvador, was arrested off a fishing vessel in New Bedford in July. A family member, who asked for anonymity due to fears around their immigration status, said Cornejo has long suffered from stomach problems that require a strict diet and over-the-counter medication. Neither was provided to him at Plymouth or later at the federal prison in Berlin, New Hampshire, the family member said. A statewide search found one misdemeanor motor vehicle violation for Cornejo and a civil motor vehicle infraction in 2020 in Wareham District Court.

On Aug. 7, Cornejo appeared by video from prison for a bond hearing in Chelmsford Immigration Court.

“I was talking to him before he went,” the family member said. “He was telling the guards he didn’t feel well because of his stomach but they paid him no mind.”

The immigration judge denied his bond motion, part of a widespread practice following a June memorandum from ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons. 

Immediately after, according to the relative, Cornejo fainted and slammed his face on the floor, breaking his jaw. Guards took him to a nearby hospital where he underwent surgery and doctors placed five pins in his mandible. 

“What angers me most is that the guards laughed at him,” the relative said. “He was crying from so much pain and he told me on the phone that one of them said: ‘Let him cry. He’s Hispanic. They deserve it.’”

For three days afterward, Cornejo could not eat due to the pain. His relative said that now he can eat again, but he’s still in pain.

“All they give him is ibuprofen,” the family member said.

Since then, the relative said his condition has continued to deteriorate. Dizziness and fainting spells have become more frequent. They relayed that a recent check-up by prison medical staff found Cornejo’s heart rate has slowed and, as of Aug. 26, his lawyer is trying to get staff to take him to a hospital offsite.

Cornejo’s next immigration court hearing is scheduled for Thursday in Chelmsford.

On June 13, Aguiriano-Romero appeared in U.S. District Court in Boston, hoping she would be released. Judge Brian E. Murphy called her conditions in Burlington “abhorrent” and approved her transfer to the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington, Vermont. She was brought there on June 14.

She said she experienced one more indignity before the four-hour trip from Burlington to Vermont.

“They fastened the cuffs around my legs so tight that I couldn’t move, they hurt so much,” she recalled, bursting into tears. “I kept telling them it hurts. I begged them to loosen them, but they just said I was lying.”

Compared with Burlington, she said, conditions at Chittenden were better. The guards — state employees of Vermont and not ICE — respected her and even allowed her to lead prayer groups. 

After Marvin Yobani Chitic Us received dialysis in Boston, ICE moved him to the Buffalo Service Processing Center, an ICE facility in Batavia, New York, where he remains in custody.

“They say this is the only place they can provide dialysis,” he told The Light in Spanish during a phone call from Batavia. He said he receives his treatments three times a week and guards treat him respectfully. “I don’t really have anything to complain about.”

On July 9, an immigration judge denied his asylum claim for the second time. 

“I told the judge that in my country, I wouldn’t be able to get the dialysis treatment I need and that I will die,” Us said. “He showed no compassion toward me.” 

Us declined to appeal the decision. 

“They’ve denied my claim twice,” he said. “Why do it a third time with the same results? What am I going to do about it?

“I prefer to leave,” he added. “I’m not going to get down on my knees and beg. At least there, I’ll be free and at peace. What other option do I have?”

Beyond Burlington: the South and deportation

Castro spent two days in Plymouth County Correctional Facility before being moved again. 

“When I arrived in Plymouth, they gave me a little food and changed our clothes, telling us we had to wear the prison uniform,” he said during a phone call from Guatemala. “In Plymouth, at least they see you.”

From there, ICE sent him to the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas, where he remained for over a month awaiting deportation. The facility is staffed by ICE agents but administered by Akima Infrastructure Protection, Inc., a for-profit detention company that has faced allegations of rights abuses in its running of the Guantanamo Bay migrant detention facility earlier this year.

“They treated me terribly,” at Port Isabel, he said. “The guards don’t even want to talk to you and treat one like a donkey.”

Officials fed Castro and the other detainees a single bowl of cereal and milk each day, he said. When they were thirsty, they opened the toilet cistern and drank from the tank, he said. Their only choice for potable water was purchasing bottles at the prison commissary: $2.50 for a small bottle, $5 or $6 for a small soda, Castro recalled.

He said two Salvadorans, whose families deposited money into their commissary accounts, gave Castro extra food and water, using their funds.

“I felt very weak there,” he continued. “I needed food and [medical treatment] and [the guards] didn’t even pay me attention. People fainted in front of me.”

On July 12, Castro said prison staff woke him up around 4 a.m. and took him to the airport.

Castro recalled boarding a military transport plane with 30 other detainees bound for Guatemala City around 11 a.m. There were no seat supports and they were chained the whole time, he said.

“I suffered so much,” he said. “There was so much noise in the plane that it hurt my ears. I couldn’t hear anything.”

Upon landing in Guatemala City around 5:30 p.m. local time, Castro said he was overwhelmed with emotion. He had left behind a child and grandchild in New Bedford, and said he misses them deeply

“I felt so sad,” he said. “Honestly, I began to cry.”

Garcia DosSantos said he decided to sign the deportation papers while in custody in Plymouth. He and his wife decided to speed up his deportation so they could more easily plan their future together.

Authorities transferred him from Plymouth to the Alexandria Staging Facility in Alexandria, Louisiana, managed by the private prison company GEO Group and staffed by employees of GEO Group and ICE. The facility is the busiest hub of deportation flights in the country. 

Garcia DosSantos said the facility kept lights on around the clock, the air conditioner at full blast, and they were given three thin blankets for warmth. Phone calls, which had been free in Plymouth, now required detainees to maintain a $50 balance.

He recalled falling ill with a fever over 100 degrees at one point, and asking the facility for help. 

“They didn’t even give me medicine for that,” he said.

On July 3, authorities loaded Garcia DosSantos and 59 other detainees on a plane headed to Fortaleza, capital of the northeast Brazilian state of Ceará. The flight lasted 10 hours. The detainees wore cuffs for nine of them, he said. Agents removed them when they entered Brazilian airspace in accordance with a 2017 agreement with the U.S. on deportations.

“The guards got to eat before us and the chains made it difficult for us to eat,” he said. 

Only once the plane landed in Fortaleza, he said, did he get Tylenol for his fever.

“The Brazilian government gave me medicine,” he said. “We spent a day and a half in Fortaleza and then I took a bus for two days home.”

Garcia DosSantos said he and his wife are currently in the process of obtaining a visa for her to go to Brazil. He said his perspective on the U.S. changed after his time in detention.

“I experienced such poor treatment there,” he said. “I have no desire to be in the U.S. right now.”

He said that hopefully, in a post-Trump future, they’d be able to return to the U.S.

“I just sent her some documents so she could get the appropriate visa for a long-term stay in Brazil,” he said. “She’ll be able to stay here for a while then go back to the U.S. at will.”

Back in New Bedford

One evening in August, about 50 worshippers gathered in a New Bedford backyard. A video on social media showed the space packed with folding chairs, and the voices of the congregation rising together in “El Himno de Victoria,” the Victory Hymn, sung in Spanish. 

Hermano, no tengas temor, si detrás viene Faraón, they sang joyfully and loudly, hands held high. Al otro lado tu pasarás y allí tu vas entonar, el himno de la victoria. 

“Brother, have no fear if Pharaoh follows you. For you will make it to the other side and there you will sing the victory hymn.”

The caption read: “accíon de gracias de nuestra celula por la liberación de Meli.” “Thanksgivings from our church for Meli’s liberation.” 

Front and center stood Meli — the nickname family and friends use for Aguiriano-Romero — one hand raised as she swayed to the song. Faith and family had carried her through her 10-week detention.

But trauma remains. Moments after her release on Aug. 12, a day after making bond, she jumped on a video call with her family while in the van on the way home. When her youngest daughter appeared on the screen, she paused.

“I asked: “Who is that?’” she said, choking back tears. “I couldn’t remember what she looked like. Luckily, I’m able to be with them again.”

Aguiriano-Romero’s next immigration court date is set for February 2026. 

Méndez’s case is ongoing. On June 26, ICE removed his GPS ankle monitor. He has since thrown himself into volunteer work at the Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores, Community Economic Development Center of Southeastern Massachusetts, and other groups in an effort to leverage the notoriety of his case.

He said he has no intention of returning to Guatemala. 

“I promised my wife and child that I would not leave them,” he said. “There are so many people now living through what I lived through.

“We do everything possible to make money and put food on the table,” he said. “I don’t want to return to a place where we don’t have that.”

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org. Contact Eleonora Bianchi at ebianchi@newbedfordlight.org. 

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