It was a hot July summer day in Miami when, looking to make a little extra income, Ricardo Quintana Chavez took to the beach to sell ceviche.
In just four weeks since, he’s been in four different detention centers – including the Dade County jail, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Florida known as Alligator Alcatraz, and two immigration detention facilities in El Paso.
“Hace un mes que no veo el sol. He bajado de peso 15 libras y tengo barba del siglo 19. Estoy desesperado y tambien por mi familia,” Quintana told El Paso Matters during a brief phone call from the East Montana Detention Facility on Fort Bliss. “I haven’t seen sunlight in a month. I’ve lost 15 pounds and have a 19th-century beard. I’m distressed for myself and for my family as well.”
Quintana, 57, an investigative journalist from Peru, said he sought asylum in the United States in 2021 after receiving death threats for his coverage of the Peruvian presidential elections and government corruption. While he had authorization to remain and work in the United States while his asylum case was heard, he said a definitive court date had never been set.
While in Florida, he worked in restaurants, ride-share companies and for a Peruvian natural products company. But as his salary and work hours were cut, he said he looked for ways to make extra income.
When he was detained in Miami for the civil infraction of selling items on a public beach without a permit, he paid the $180 fine – but was released to ICE agents who quickly and unexpectedly took him to Alligator Alcatraz. He was there through Aug. 8, when he was transported to the detention facility in Northeast El Paso, and transferred to the Fort Bliss center Aug. 15.
The $1.2 billion ICE detention complex – which will be the largest federal detention center for civil detainees in the country when it expands to accommodate 5,000 people – opened Aug. 1. Within two weeks, it held about 1,000 people.
The facility includes a game room, library, dining area and health care areas. The white reinforced tent facility sits on military land in the desert north of Montana Avenue near George Dieter Drive. It is staffed by ICE personnel and temporary employees who work under a private contractor.
“Es mejor aquí, si, pero mejor que que?” (“It’s better here, yes, but better than what?”) Quintana asked about the facility on the Eastside, which he characterized as cleaner, bigger and “more humane” than the one in Florida. In Alligator Alcatraz, he said, he was made to use the restroom while shackled and with an ICE agent in front of him with his back turned.
“When they took me to the county jail in Miami, that’s when my misfortune began,” he said in Spanish. “It was traumatic to be shackled at my feet and hands as if I had committed a major crime – or a crime at all. How is it that being in this country – with the government’s permission at that – is now a crime? Why was I considered to have legal status when it came to paying taxes but not now?”
Quintana came to the United States on a visitor visa for two weeks in 2019, and returned to Peru within the required time, according to his family. In August 2021, he returned to the United States on another visitor visa.
At that time, his family said, they received a letter containing death threats against him and his family stemming from his work as a journalist. Quintana said that’s when he decided to request asylum – a move his family supported for his safety. He was granted authorization to remain in the country and work here.
On July 20, he was selling ceviche on the beach when he was approached by local police. He was taken to the county jail and issued a fine, which he paid. Upon his release, he was turned over to ICE agents, who accused him of having overstayed his 2019 visa, he said, adding that he wasn’t given an opportunity to present the necessary documents needed to prove otherwise.
He was transported to Alligator Alcatraz, a converted airstrip at the abandoned Dade-Collier airport in the marshy Everglade wetlands just west of Miami. The center has a capacity of about 3,000 people and is among several ICE facilities erected to expand immigrant detention capacity under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation efforts.
In response to a lawsuit by environmental groups, a federal judge on Thursday ordered that detainees be moved out of the facility within 60 days, no longer accept new detainees and that equipment such as generators and fencing be dismantled.
“En una miseria increíble,” Quintana said Thursday, recounting that it took 12 hours to be processed into the facility – all while shackled. Eventually he was placed in a 13-by-10-foot cell with about 30 other people. The facility was overcrowded and dirty, he said, and the meals were like dog food. “It’s unbelievably miserable.”
He said he – like many others – weren’t told why they were being transferred to Texas. At the Northeast El Paso facility, he said, staff were generally nicer and more tolerant than in Florida. But detainees were still demeaned, he said.
Nights are always the worst, he said.
“Los llantos y gritos de la gente desesperada te rompe el corazón, especialmente porque sabemos que la mayoría de los que estamos aquí no deberíamos,” he said. “The cries and screams of desperate people break your heart, especially because we know that the majority of those here shouldn’t be.”
Civil rights organizations such as ACLU Texas, Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and Border Network for Human Rights have denounced what they call inhumane conditions at the detention facilities, also protesting that they’re being built on military bases with Department of Defense dollars.
On Thursday, the groups gathered alongside the veterans organization Common Defense in El Paso, saying in a statement that converting the base into an immigration detention center is “a betrayal of our values, a misuse of resources, and a stain on our nation.” The groups pointed out that a tent facility leaves detainees exposed to brutal heat and sandstorms.
“Military bases are meant to protect our freedoms, not cage human beings,” Common Defense’s Lead Texas Organizer and Air Force veteran Britni Cuington said in a statement. “The fact that ICE is detaining people at Fort Bliss is disgraceful and unacceptable.”
Waiting to be sent home
For Quintana, the site of a detention center is not a concern as much as being locked up not knowing where he stands or where he might be sent next.
Quintana said he wants to self-deport rather than wait to be officially removed, which can take much longer than the alternative, he said. Under voluntary departure, he’d be allowed to leave at his own expense and on his own terms. A forced removal, or deportation, carries consequences such as reentry bans.
The wait might be especially long since deportation flights to Peru are much less frequent. In July 2025, four deportation flights to Peru were recorded – compared with 54 to Guatemala, the highest for any receiving country that month, according to an ICE flight monitor known as Witness at the Border, now under the organization Human Rights First.
Since Trump’s inauguration in January through July, 1,036 deportation flights have been recorded – an increase of 15% over the same time the previous year, according to the flight monitor.
At the same time, detentions of immigrants continue on the rise: As of Aug. 10, more than 59,000 people were in ICE detention – 70% without any criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, or TRAC. The majority of detainees – over 13,000 – are in Texas.
TRAC isn’t yet reporting the number of detainees at the East Montana facility, but another ICE detention center in East El Paso had an average daily population of just over 800 in early August. The tent facility in Northeast reported just under 200 at that time.
Quintana, a longtime reporter and editor who last worked for Digital TV Peru, graduated from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima and the Universidad de San Martin de Porres, earning communication and journalism degrees. He said men of all ages and backgrounds are being detained at the East Montana facility.
He said his heart breaks most for the young men who braved traversing thousands of miles across dangerous countries with the goal of working and earning a little money to send home. Now they’re imprisoned, he said, and they’re too young to understand why.
Journalist’s case gets news, government attention
For Quintana, his reporting background has helped his story get news coverage in his home country, he said, prompting his case to be discussed in a foreign relations committee hearing by the Peruvian congress Aug. 18. Committee members said that the government should seek to help Peruvians detained not just in authoritarian countries, but in democratic countries where they’re essentially being disappeared.
Sadith Tavara, Quintana’s wife, said journalism has always been a way of life for him. “He’s a police investigative journalist and he’s very passionate about his profession, about ensuring that people know the truth,” Tavara told El Paso Matters.
Quintana’s family had struggled to find an attorney, particularly as he’s been moved around so much. On Friday, he talked to an attorney who is now working to get his case file from Florida to set up a hearing, Tavara said.
“We’re a little more hopeful, but we won’t be at ease until he’s home,” Tavara said.
Tavara said the family most fears that he’ll remain locked up longer than his mental health can handle – or that he’ll be deported to a country other than Peru. Their hope, she said, is that he’s allowed to self-deport soon.
“A place like that can break anyone,” she said, adding that being jailed in a foreign country where he’s unwanted has been difficult for her husband. “We want him back.”
Quintana’s sister, Monica, called his situation, like that of many others, a violation of civil rights.
“Everything that is happening is devastating for families who are undergoing the same travesty,” she said.
She said she’s been able to talk to her brother almost daily. On days she doesn’t hear from him, she fears the worst. On a recent call, she said, he broke down and there was little she could say to comfort him.
“You just don’t know, “ she said, “and not knowing is the worst.”
In his call with El Paso Matters, Quintana said he has changed his perspective about the United States.
“Estoy viviendo la pesadilla americana,” he said. “I’m living the American nightmare.”
“No pienso regresar nunca más en mi vida,” he added. “I don’t plan to ever return in my lifetime.”
Quintana said he had planned to return to Peru soon: His ailing mother is 81 and has had heart complications.
On Aug. 10, his family was being interviewed by a Peruvian news organization, Cuarto Poder, when he called his mother to check in.
“Tranquila, mami, tranquila. Ya pronto nos veremos las caras o sea lo que quiera Dios.
Cuidate,” he told her as she sobbed. “Remain calm, mami, remain calm. We will see each other face-to-face soon, God willing. Take care of yourself.”
The post Peruvian in Fort Bliss ICE detention says ‘American nightmare’ began after selling ceviche in Miami Beach appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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