Honduran teen tells of abuse, isolation at detention center

The stretches in solitary confinement inside a detention center in the mountains of Virginia were what broke him, the Honduran teen said. The guards stopped bringing food, he said. One time they let him out, and a group of them came at him. So many guards were kicking him in the gut, he said, he couldn’t breathe.

“I was just crying and praying to see my mother one more time,” said the 18-year-old immigrant, who gave his firsthand account to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he feared the government might retaliate against him for speaking publicly. “I ended up getting put in solitary confinement for no reason.”

The teen’s experience echoes abuse claims by other children whose accounts are included in a federal civil rights lawsuit charging that guards at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center in Staunton, Virginia, beat them, locked them up for long periods in solitary confinement and left them nude and shivering in concrete cells. He arrived at Shenandoah in the summer of 2016 when he was 16 years old – during part of the time period covered by allegations in the lawsuit, which spans both the Obama and Trump administrations.

The center’s director has denied that children were abused at the facility. The facility did not immediately respond to a request for details about the teen’s case on Wednesday.

The Honduran teen said he began his journey to the United States with his brother after he and his family received death threats from drug traffickers in his rural region of Honduras. He was 15 when he hopped a freight train known as the beast, or La Bestia, on a frightening journey through Mexico. He turned himself in to U.S. authorities in the spring of 2016 at the U.S.-Mexico border, he said.

Because he entered the country illegally and without relatives, he was routed to a few shelters run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services meant for unaccompanied immigrant children. Later that summer, after he got in a couple of fights with other detained teens who he said had taunted him and taken his things, he was put on a plane that would take him to Virginia and the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.

That’s where his real troubles began, he said.

“I got to the airport and two men came and started tying up my ankles and wrists,” the teen said. “When we got there, they took me into the bathroom and stripped me down so I was naked.”

Sometime later, after he was locked away by himself in a cell, guards temporarily papered over the cell’s small windows to keep him from looking out, he said. Guards also would withhold food and eat in front of him at times, he said. Breakfast, when it was provided, consisted of an apple and crackers.