It is one planet, one world, one humankind. Nevertheless nations need to control who and what comes through their borders. Diseases and other harms within goods being brought in and people with nefarious intents need to be excluded. But to claim that everyone who has entered a nation without a valid entry document is a criminal is just wrong. And when that person who makes that assertion holds a high office and has himself committed criminal acts, it looks like he only has regard for the law when it is other people who offend it. It is other people who find themselves in desperate situations in their own country, not because of anything that they have done. It is other people who are trying to survive and protect their families within a despotic or failed state. What are these other people supposed to do? Lie down and die of despair?
Some 'illegal immigrants' may well be criminals. Most are not. They are people with the spirit and the will to try to save themselves and their families. One such person has spoken about his ordeal as reported by The Washington Post, 'Invasive frisks, suicide attempts: Three migrants describe Guantánamo detention', 25 February 2025.
'During his two weeks at the Guantánamo Bay naval station, Uzcátegui, 27, said he was rarely let outside. Both times, he was shackled and placed in what he described as a cage. It was the only sight of the blue Cuban sky he got, so otherworldly it felt like a dream.
“They didn’t treat me like a human being,” he said, his voice flustered with indignation. “They threw me in a cage.” '
'Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem called the migrants transported to Cuba the “worst of the worst".'
Diuvar Uzcátegui has said that he was working at a construction site in El Paso when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials arrived claiming he had missed an appointment. He had been working and attending regular check-ins since crossing the border illegally in December 2023. In a statement ICE named him as a Tren de Aragua gang member. He denies both accusations. Detainees sent to Guantánamo were given a Bible, a blanket and a sleeping pad. Uzcátegui used the Bible to keep track of time by making a small tear on the last blank page after every third meal. He read passages from the Bible over and over and made up sermons to sing to himself to help with the anxiety, the depression, the crying and feeling like he was drowning.
Now that he has been deported back to his family in Venezuela he still wants a future in the United States (legally). Though 'haunted by the memories of his detainment and the screams of his fellow deportees' he said that he likes 'that there's laws there — that you can live safely.' So things in Venezuela must be very bad indeed. Nevertheless the punishment meted out for wanting a better life and the humiliation suffered being locked in a high-security military prison when he had broken no other laws have left their mark.
How much innate human wealth is squandered by the way we treat each other? International co-operation has never been more needed and at this time of crisis, America decides to be a taker, not a giver.
