He couldn’t tell when the days started and ended within the windowless, peeling yellow four walls of his prison cell in Guantánamo.

Diuvar Uzcátegui kept track of them by putting a small tear in the last, blank page of a Bible after every third meal. The book was given to him by the military guards along with a blanket and a ¾-inch foam pad to sleep on. He went to the bathroom in a bucket connected to a tap in the cell.

And though he couldn’t see his fellow detainees, he could hear them.

Some of the men screamed. Others threatened to kill themselves. One interviewed by The Washington Post said he attempted it.

During his two weeks at the Guantánamo Bay naval station, Uzcátegui, 27, said he was rarely let outside. Both times, he was shackled and placed in what he described as a cage. It was the only sight of the blue Cuban sky he got, so otherworldly it felt like a dream.

“They didn’t treat me like a human being,” he said, his voice flustered with indignation. “They threw me in a cage.”

The Trump administration flew nearly 180 migrants from the United States to Guantánamo and deported all of them to Venezuela on Thursday. The Post spoke with three men who were detained in the U.S. military prison that has been used to house people suspected of terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. All had crossed the border illegally, and although Homeland Security

Secretary Kristi L. Noem called the migrants transported to Cuba the “worst of the worst,” The Post could find no other criminal record for those interviewed.

Uzcátegui, José Daniel Simancas and Franyer Montes said they were denied calls to lawyers or loved ones after repeated pleas.

They said they were subjected to humiliating and invasive strip searches. They described prolonged periods in isolation, with only two one-hour opportunities to go outside over two weeks.

Their testimonies echoed the fears expressed by human rights groups — that migrants transferred to a place known for its isolation and history of torture allegations could be vulnerable to abuse.

The migrants’ conditions in Guantánamo “were horrific, and are far more restrictive, more severe and more abusive than what we would see in a typical immigration detention facility in the United States,” said Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project. The American Civil Liberties Union is one of many organizations that sued the administration to allow legal access to the migrants.

The migrants described being supervised by military guards, a concern for legal rights groups that have stressed that immigrants are there because of a civil, immigration violation, not alleged war crimes like the 9/11 detainees. Blurring the lines between civilian and military enforcement, Cho said, encroaches “on the division between civil society and militarized society.”

“At the end of the day, military staff are not supposed to be enforcing civilian law, which is immigration law,” Cho said. “And by placing military guards to detain people in detention, that is exactly what is happening.”

Cho said the migrants’ alleged days-long stretch in their cells also fits the definition of solitary confinement as laid out by the United Nations’ Nelson Mandela Rules, which defines it as holding prisoners for more than 22 hours per day without “meaningful human contact.”

The unprecedented move to house migrants at Guantánamo was made as the Trump administration moves forward with the president’s directive to deport the highest number of migrants in history and detention facilities quickly fill up. Some lawyers and political science professors also said the move was intended to foment the perception of migrants in the United States as criminals and terrorists.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the conditions and treatment of migrants detained at Guantánamo. The Defense Department deferred questions to DHS. The administration has stood by its assertion that many of those sent to Cuba were dangerous criminals who are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.

Uzcátegui was reunited with his family in Maracay, Venezuela, on Saturday night. He was transported in a dark Venezuelan government security van. His family was there waiting for him. His mother hugged him and sobbed.

“Guantánamo is supposed to be a maximum-security prison for terrorists, no?” he asked. “I’m not any of that. I’m not a criminal. My record is clean.” Swallowing screws

It was a day like any other in El Paso, when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials showed up at a construction job site in late January, looking for Uzcátegui.

He had been working and attending regular check-ins with ICE officials after having crossed the border illegally in December 2023.

But, they contended, he had missed an appointment — an accusation he denies. The agents put him in handcuffs, and shortly thereafter, ICE put out a statement naming him as a Tren de Aragua gang member.

The migrant, his friends and family were all bewildered by the accusation. He had never been even loosely connected to a gang, they said, and the only crime he had committed was crossing the border illegally.

A week and a half later, Uzcátegui said he was awoken at 2 a.m. ICE officials told him to put on a gray sweater and sweatpants and handcuffed him by his hands, waist and feet. Then they drove him and several other detainees to a tarmac, where a military plane awaited them.

“It was really humiliating, really frustrating because they also took photos of us,” he said. DHS later released high-resolution images showing the detainees boarding the flights. Uzcátegui said he wanted to ask why they were taking photos, “but I was afraid because I was being humiliated in a way that was, I’m sorry for the word, racist.”

The ICE agents told him he was being taken to Miami, where he would then be deported to Venezuela. When the plane landed, he looked around the Caribbean landscape, thinking he was in Florida — until a military guard informed the group of migrants that they were in Guantánamo.

“And I say, ‘Why am I here if I never committed a crime — not a single one?’ And he told me it didn’t matter, that I had an order of deportation,” Uzcátegui recalled.

Officials took his photo and his fingerprints, and gave him three items — the Bible, the blanket and the sleeping pad — and put Uzcátegui in a windowless cell, where the days and nights blended as he felt his mind begin to slip.

In the days that followed, more migrants began filling the naval station prison. Uzcátegui could hear men screaming from other cells, he said, pleading to be let out and threatening to kill themselves.

“Get me out of here,” he heard one scream again and again. “I’m going to kill myself.” Franyer Montes, 22, said he reached a point in his 13-day incarceration when he considered taking his own life. Thoughts of his mother and child held him back.

José Daniel Simancas was one of the detainees who tried to kill himself during his 10-day stay there. He attempted to cut his wrists with plastic water bottles that he had tried to sharpen. But the edges didn’t cut deep enough, he said. He and the other migrants interviewed for this story said they had seen or spoken with at least two other men who acknowledged trying to end their own lives.

“One tried to hang himself with the sheet but he couldn’t tie it to the table because it was too small,” Simancas said. “Another swallowed 10 screws and they took him to the emergency room several times.” He added, “We all thought about killing ourselves.” ‘Drowning’

The migrants said they were allowed outside about once per week for a one-hour period. The guards shackled them and put them in what they described as individual open-air cages placed next to each other.

“At least there we didn’t have to shout to talk to each other,” Simancas said. “We could see each other’s faces.”

Uzcátegui said the most traumatic part of his stay there was being frisked. Every time he left his cell, whether for the shower or the outdoor hour, he was frisked upon leaving and again when returning. During the searches, guards made him strip off his clothes and open up his backside and genitals. They watched him as he showered.

Uzcátegui started having panic attacks as a deep depression and anxiety set in.

“I cried and cried. I said to myself, ‘I’m going to die here,’” he said. “It was affecting me psychologically.”

He described a moment when he was sobbing uncontrollably, his eyes closed. When he opened them, he said he realized he had been hitting himself hard in the head with his hands. His mind was slipping.

During his days in the cell, Uzcátegui read passages from the Bible over and over again. He made up a sermon that he sang to himself as he stared at the same four walls that enclosed him, as if threatening to swallow him.

“I am crying, I need you, Father God,” he sang in Spanish. “I am calling you because I am in pain. I am praying because I can’t any more. I need you, I want to follow your will.”

“I sang it and I sang it,” he said. “I felt like I was drowning.” A homecoming

On their last day, Uzcátegui and the other migrants said they were asked to fill out paperwork to begin facilitating calls to family or lawyers for the first time, after having pleaded to talk to their relatives throughout their stay. Later that night, the men said they were awoken, shackled and boarded onto a plane.

The Venezuelan government released footage of the deportees as their plane arrived late Thursday. The men exited the plane all wearing the gray sweatshirts and pants they had worn in Cuba. A high-ranking official within strongman Nicolás Maduro’s government shook their hands and welcomed them home.

Uzcátegui said that when he left Venezuela, he had no intention of returning. He was fleeing the government there, he said, and had not been able to make ends meet for his family. Nonetheless, his time in Guantánamo has changed his perspective.

“In that prison, those 14 days that I was there in that hell, I realized I just wanted to be with my family,” he said by phone on Sunday.

“I was going crazy, and I knew it was affecting me, and the fact that my family didn’t know what had happened to me. … I just wanted to get out of there.”

Across the South American country, the men sent back to Venezuela have begun returning to their families. Some are being greeted by relieved parents and loved ones who have spent the past several weeks wondering whether they were okay. Maduro is casting their deportation as part of his “Return to the Homeland” initiative to persuade migrants to come back.

But for Uzcátegui and others detained in Guantánamo, the return to Venezuela has also been filled with anxiety. Electrical blackouts remain frequent. Maduro’s grip on power, if anything, has solidified since they left. Last year, he claimed victory in a presidential election that the international community has widely condemned as fraudulent.

Montes said the return home has been filled with joy and anguish.

“I’m happy because, thank God, I am with my family. But mentally I can’t overcome this, I can’t be at peace mentally,” he said by phone Monday. “I carry the trauma.”

Uzcátegui returned home in the same clothes he was wearing when he was arrested by ICE while working. But he said he is a different man after being locked in a high-security military prison. He hasn’t been able to sleep. And he is haunted by the memories of his detainment and the screams of his fellow deportees.

Despite this, he is convinced of one thing. He still wants a future in the United States.

“I like the United States. I want to return because I didn’t do anything bad, and I like that there’s laws there — that you can live safely,” he said. “I want to return, legally.”

previous coverage

• Suspected Venezuelan gang members first to arrive at Guantanamo 

related stories

• First military deportation flights from US take off for Guantanamo as sailors help Marines prep for incoming migrants