‘DO SOMETHING TO HELP PEOPLE WHO ARE STILL DETAINED’

I’m a Salvadoran national. I’m 42 years old.

I was deported from Texas in 2018 where I had been living with my family. I have been diagnosed with leukemia. I tried to fight my case in Texas so I could continue receiving my medical treatment and chemotherapy there. But I was deported back to El Salvador for two and a half months.

In my country, I could not get the medical treatment I need. So I applied for a humanitarian visa in Mexico, and arrived in Tijuana in June.

In Tijuana, I sought help from a shelter called Casa del Migrante. The shelter tried to help me get medical attention, but it was useless. I had to apply for a number to turn myself into immigration in the U.S. It took 10 months. I was suffering during that time, because I was without medication or chemotherapy.

I turned myself in at the San Ysidro Bridge on June 3. I spent a whole week in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding cell sleeping on the floor, because there are no mattresses. I got a cardboard box with a piece of aluminum foil, which was called a thermal blanket. I repeatedly asked to see a doctor, but no one would listen to me.

After a week, I was transferred to the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.

I arrived on June 10. I was sent to a place called the medical unit. But I learned this unit, with 45 people, has people with emotional and mental health problems, not just physical problems. There were people screaming, insulting the guards, insulting each other and not receiving treatment.

For me, this was really dangerous because I already had a very weak immune system.

I was very stressed and depressed. I missed members of my family, including my son. I thought I would never see them again.

When I learned about COVID-19 from the television news, there were already officers who began to leave infected with the disease. I got a little sick with a lot of coughing and could not sleep. I went to the doctor. I told him that I had cancer. He gave me salt packets, and he told me to gargle with warm water.

We started to notice some changes. One day, a nurse with gloves came in. She had on a mask and lined us up to take our temperature.

I knew my health was in real danger. I called lawyers with RAICES (the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services) and Casa Marianela in Texas asking them to please put pressure on immigration officials to release me because I did not want to die inside that facility. They called the American Civil

Liberties Union in San Diego, which finally helped me.

As the situation became more critical inside, I was moved from the unit along with two other people who had diabetes. We went to an isolated unit where there were seven people.

There were some good officers inside. One of them told me, “Benítez, I hope God takes you out of here soon, because this is getting ugly.”

Several officers in our unit stopped coming to work because they were afraid of catching the virus. They knew that there were already many people inside who were infected.

Publicly, the immigration officials said that it was not happening. But that was a lie. There were already many people locked up in that place who were sick. There were detainees with the coronavirus in the cells mixed with others who were not sick. Visits stopped. Lawyers were not allowed to make video calls, so everything became chaotic.

The people in charge covered up what was really happening inside. They kept saying publicly that everything was under control. That was a lie.

God gave me the opportunity to get out just in time. I wasn’t released because of the coronavirus outbreak inside the detention center. I was taken out because my $10,000 bond got paid, and my lawyers started putting pressure on immigration.

There are people in there who have been locked up for years and haven’t heard about their cases. Many have made mistakes in the past, but they have paid for their crimes by the time served.

I hope this will open the eyes and ears of everyone who reads this, including the governor of California, so they can do something to help these people who are still detained. They need their freedom. We all have the right to freedom and to live humanely.