Hector’s Story
Hector was a successful DJ in El Salvador who had built an audience of devoted radio listeners after years of work. As Hector’s popularity grew, local gangs extorted him for money and tried to force him to help them spread gang propaganda. When he refused, they assaulted him with a baseball bat and threatened his life. So, in 2019, he made the painful decision to leave behind his family, friends, and career in El Salvador to seek asylum in the United States.
Hector arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border on February 10, 2020, the eve of the pandemic. The journey was grueling, especially due to Hector’s gastroesophageal reflux disease, which caused severe burning in his throat. When left untreated, the condition can lead to cancer of the esophagus. Soon after his entry, border patrol agents detained Hector and sent him to the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a privately run facility in San Diego, California.
As COVID-19 surged across the country, including inside immigrant detention centers, Hector spent the first few months of his detention being shuttled from one facility to another. None of the passengers on the buses were given masks and they were packed tightly together. Hector watched nervously as unmasked people around him on the bus coughed and sneezed in the closed setting.
Conditions were not any better inside the detention centers. Government contractors ignored social distancing protocols and neglected basic sanitation and hygiene practices. When people predictably caught the virus, the staff refused to quarantine them.
In detention, Hector’s gastroesophageal reflux disease worsened. The acid caused pain in his throat so intense that he could not sleep or swallow. The staff refused his request to see a doctor and instead advised him to file a grievance. He filed one, and then another, and then another. Before long, he had submitted dozens. But nothing changed. One day, while chewing his food, Hector felt his tooth fracture. It had grown brittle and rotten from the reflux.
Hector went on a hunger strike to protest the squalid conditions at the facility. In retaliation for his organizing efforts, the detention staff placed him in segregation for thirty days and took away his job. Fortunately, Hector was able to connect with a reporter and, after his story aired, he finally received a response to his medical concerns. The staff arranged for him to see a doctor in March 2023. A doctor examined him and prescribed medication to manage his reflux. Despite the doctor’s order, the staff at the Otay Mesa Detention Center refused to fill Hector’s prescription and told him to file a grievance.
After more than four years in immigration detention, Hector hopes the public realizes how brutal and abhorrent immigration detention is. He wants people to know that many community members and asylum seekers languish in a detention center for years while in immigration limbo. Hector is worried about the continued retaliation people will endure at the hands of private immigration facility staff and how much unnecessary suffering goes on behind closed doors due to medical neglect. To this day, Hector does not understand the need for immigration detention since it traps people who simply want to return home to their family or prevents people from building a new home in this country.
