AMY GOODMAN: We go to Texas, where Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and his son Oscar have been released from ICE detention after being jailed for seven months. Gutiérrez Soto first sought asylum in the United States in 2008 after receiving death threats for reporting on alleged corruption in the Mexican military. He was detained in December, only weeks after he criticized US asylum policy during a speech at the National Press Club. The federal judge who ordered his release questioned whether the Trump administration’s detention of Emilio Gutiérrez Soto and his son Oscar violated his First Amendment rights.
Well, on Wednesday, I spoke with Emilio Gutiérrez Soto in El Paso, Texas, and began by asking him how it feels to be free.
EMILIO GUTIÉRREZ SOTO: [translated] Well, thank you for this invitation. It’s a little weird, having been seven months and some days at the ICE concentration camp. We feel a bit unusual. The way of life in that concentration camp is extremely harsh. What the immigration authorities seek is to finish you off psychologically. And we’re trying to resume our lives in liberty, in semi-liberty, practically, because we continue to be supervised by the immigration authority — in this case, internal security through ICE.
AMY GOODMAN: And can you describe the conditions that you were held in? Were you held together with Oscar, your son?
EMILIO GUTIÉRREZ SOTO: [translated] Yes, my son and I, since we entered the concentration camp, we were always together in the same facilities.
The conditions in that place are truly denigrating. Day after day, we need to deal with or confront security of officers who are hired by a private company and who lack the basic ethical concepts when it comes to respecting human rights. We have had to confront a situation where there is some presumed food, which was really practically garbage, in addition…