After returning to the US from Nicaragua last week, Winooski, Vermont School Superintendent Wilmer Chavarria was detained for several hours upon reentering the country at a Texas airport for by US Border Patrol; meanwhile, his husband, Cyrus Dundgeon, was “met with hostility while desperately searching for answers about his husband’s status,” according to a mynbc5.com report. This weekend, the two men, both US citizens, spoke to the press about their experience.
Reports mynbc5.com:
“You feel like you’ve been abducted by a gang of aggressive, violent people who are trying to manipulate you and who are lying to you, and while you are being abducted, you know that these people are capable of doing anything to you because they don’t care,” said Wilmer Chavarria.
That’s how the Winooski School District superintendent described what he called an “abusive” and “bizarre” interrogation he endured at the Houston Port of Entry at the George Bush Airport Monday night.
Chavarria, a naturalized U.S. citizen who is originally from Nicaragua, said he and his husband, Cyrus Dundgeon, were returning from a trip to visit his family. Those family members had been living with him in Vermont under temporary protected status, but out of fear of deportation, they recently returned to their home country of Nicaragua.
Despite both being U.S. citizens and having Global Entry, at customs, Chavarria said he was told to go to a different section than his husband, before being escorted to a Customs and Border Protection holding room without being given a reason.
“Every time we attempted to ask, we were met with aggressive nos and very intimidating and aggressive verbal abuse on their part whenever we wanted to ask for answers,” Chavarria said.
Moments after being brought into CBP, Chavarria said he was met with an unidentified woman calling him into another room.
“I asked whether I was being detained, and she said ‘You’re not being detained,'” Chavarria said. “I said, ‘Then can I go?’ And she said, ‘No, you may not go.'”
Dundgeon, forced to wait on another level of the airport, said he was met with hostility while desperately searching for answers about his husband’s status.
“I essentially waited for four and a half, five hours until Wilmer was released,” Dundgeon said. “All that time, I have no idea what’s going on. Am I going to see him again? Is he gonna be taken somewhere?”
Read the complete mynbc5.com story here.
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