Updated on July 24, 2019 at 7:40 p.m. with a joint statement from immigration officials
Francisco Erwin Galicia, a Dallas-born U.S. citizen, spent 23 days in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in conditions that made him so desperate he almost opted to self-deport.
Galicia says he lost 26 pounds during that time in a South Texas immigrant detention center because officers didn’t provide him with enough food.
He said he wasn’t allowed to shower and his skin was dry and dirty.
He and 60 other men were crammed into an overcrowded holding area where they slept on the floor and were given only aluminum-foil blankets, he said. Some men had to sleep on the restroom area floor.
Ticks bit some of the men and some were very sick, Galicia said. But many were afraid to ask to go to the doctor because CBP officers told them their stay would start over if they did, he said.
“It was inhumane how they treated us. It got to the point where I was ready to sign a deportation paper just to not be suffering there anymore. I just needed to get out of there,” he said.
Galicia spoke to The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, one day after he was released by federal officials who had earlier refused to acknowledge his citizenship when presented with his birth certificate.
darthjoey91 on July 25th, 2019 at 15:53 UTC »
Out of curiosity, what would have happened if he play along with ICE, chose self-deportation, got to wherever they sent him to, went straight to the US Embassy there, and say that he was a US citizen that had been forcibly transported to that country and needs help getting back to America?
llluminus on July 25th, 2019 at 14:26 UTC »
The fuck did I just read this correctly? The guy had his Texas ID, Social Security Card AND his Birth Certificate yet they still fucking threw him in? WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?
jesterflesh on July 25th, 2019 at 13:58 UTC »
“I told them we had rights and asked to make a phone call. But they told us, ‘You don’t have rights to anything’,” Francisco Galicia said.