Dad Pleads For Humane Treatment Of Son In Juarez Prison

It was an emotional moment as Kevin Huckabee recounted the past 15 months he has fought to get his son, Shohn, and Shohn’s friend, Carlos Quijas, fair treatment at a Juarez prison.

The two El Pasoans have spent more than a year behind bars after Mexican military officials said soldiers found two suitcases of pot in their truck. Huckabee said the pair were in Juarez to get some cheap repair work done on Shohn’s truck. On their way back to El Paso, they were reportedly run off the road by the military.

Huckabee said his son and Quijas were taken to a military base, where “they were tortured for quite a while, maybe about four hours.” Although he’s told the story numerous times, Huckabee still gets emotional.

On Tuesday, he told his story before El Paso City Council, pleading for the councilors’ help. “We need to stand up for human rights and for the people in Juarez and the rest of Mexico (who) are not being treated humanely,” he said.

The young men have been sentenced to five years in prison, accused of owning the drugs. Huckabee said during the appeal he was surprised with the magistrate judge’s decision. “She knew the stories the soldiers were telling were impossible. They couldn’t have arrested them in the manner they did and they had to be lying. Yet, she still found them guilty,” he said.

He also said the trial process is nothing like what happens in the United States. “They (attorneys) gather around a secretary’s desk and the secretary takes notes as best she can, to sometimes what become heated arguments and that becomes a trial transcript,” Huckabee said. “We in the United States take for granted that if you’re arrested for some cause, either rightly or wrongly, that you’ll get a fair trial for that. But that’s anything but the case that I’ve learned in Mexico.”

Huckabee explained he has tried to get help from the U.S. Consulate in Juarez but didn’t feel like officials there were doing all they could to ensure Shohn and Carlos’ due process and fair treatment.

While most councilors appeared touched by Huckabee’s story, a couple had questions about why they should get involved.

“We have a multitude of U.S. citizens around the world that are incarcerated, in other countries. Are we going to take a stand on those,” asked District 4 representative Carl Robinson.

“If we’re going to do this for these individuals, which I think we should take a stand, we should take a stand on all the individuals that are in this circumstance,” said District 6 Eddie Holguin Jr.

Despite the concerns, city councilors unanimously agreed to request the State Department review the conditions of incarceration of Shohn and Carlos to ensure they’re being treated fairly.

“We shouldn’t, as a United State government, intervene in sovereignty issues and how they made judicial findings and those sorts of things. But when we find that they’re not following their own constitution, they’re not following their own due process and that in many ways a United States citizen is withheld due process, then we ought to, as a United States government be aggressively involved in making that right,” said District 2 representative Susie Byrd.

Mayor John Cook said he was looking at the possibility of speaking with Juarez Mayor Hector Murguia about the two men’s imprisonment.

Officials at the Cereso prison did not return phone calls by ABC-7 asking for comment on the allegations the men were being treated unfairly.