A prominent school leader in Winooski and United States citizen is speaking out after he
spent hours in Border Patrol custody after returning to the country from a visit to Nicaragua.
“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.
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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.'"
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Meanwhile, during those hours, Chavarria said he was told he had no rights while being threatened and questioned by at least five interrogators.
"When four of them were in front of me, standing while they had me sitting down, they said that I do not have rights, that my constitutional rights don't matter at a port of entry and that I should stop talking about rights," Chavarria said.
When Chavarria asked to make a phone call, he was told "'No, we're not going to do that, give us a phone number,'" he said. "I said let me access my phone so I can give you a phone number, and they said 'No, just tell us, why won't you tell us?' But like, people don't just memorize their contact list."
During the interrogation, Chavarria said the unidentified individuals attempted to threaten and manipulate him into giving them access to his professional devices, containing information about students in the Winooski District.
“I was threatened with being referred to the FBI, the FBI was mentioned multiple times," he said. "They also threatened to stain my record so I would never get a job again. They also threatened with an extended detention if I didn’t give them the passwords to the student information or to my district files."
Yet, after five hours and never giving up his students' information, Chavarria said he was finally released, at which point he said a plainclothes officer "shook [his] hand and said that he admired [Chavarria's] resilience and the fact that [he] was protecting student information."
theintercept.com
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