For nearly three weeks, Colorado Springs resident Marivel Azpeitia has been recording phone conversations with her fiancé, Edwin Euceda Rios, while he has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In those recordings, he describes witnessing violence by detention center staff against another detainee, threats of further violence, days of isolation, missed meals, unheated living spaces, lack of medical care, going days without showers or time outside, and the inability to file a grievance.
In the recorded conversations, the frustration is audible in Euceda Rios’s voice.
“This is not the America that I know. This is not the America I was raised on,” he said during a call in which he told Azpeitia he had been unable to speak with the correct ICE staff about self-deportation – even after days of saying he was ready to leave the country and return to Honduras rather than endure the conditions in ICE detention centers any longer…