U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials detained an 18-year-old man, holding him in custody as an undocumented citizen for over three weeks. The U.S. citizen says that the officials never apologized for wrongfully detaining him, adding that the conditions were ‘inhumane’.
“We went through something inhumane,” Francisco Erwin Galicia said through a translator, NBC News reported.
Born in Dallas, Galicia has spent the majority of his life in Mexico. Galicia appeared on MSNBC’s ‘All In’ where he shared his experience in the immigrant detention facility in Texas.
Detainees at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility in South Texas were allowed to shower only every three to seven days, he said, and in between, they were given “wipes” to try to clean themselves.
“All of us at that [CBP] detention center, we couldn’t breathe or brush our teeth,” the teenager said. “We were about 60 people in one small room.”
According to Galicia, the facility was overcrowded and men were forced to take turns sleeping in the only bathroom they were allowed to use.
“We would call it the freezer because, well, it was really cold,” he said. ” … With one single bathroom for all those people — without beds or anything. And we would sleep on the floor.”
Galicia was detained at a Texas checkpoint in late June while traveling with a brother he says was undocumented. Galicia said he announced his citizenship and showed agents his Texas identification, a birth certificate and a Social Security card, but agents believed they were fake and held him.
CBP and ICE said in a statement Wednesday that Galicia gave immigration enforcement officers “conflicting reports regarding status of citizenship.”
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