Venezuelan Migrant Detained At Guantanamo Details 'Filthy' Conditions: 'They Didn't Even Clean'

More than 170 Venezuelan migrants who were held in Guantanamo Bay after arrived in Venezuela last week, nearly emptying the naval base that the Trump administration promised would house thousands of undocumented migrants. Now, one man is speaking out about his experience in the infamous detention camp.

Kevin Rodriguez, a migrant from Barinas, Venezuela, recently spoke with Noticias Telemundo for the first time since arriving in the South American country. He recounted the ordeal he experienced at Guantanamo, including lack of food, hygiene and overall safety.

While the interview provided little information on the migrant's background, Rodriguez said he spent 14 days at Guantanamo inside a small, 9 feet by 6 inches cell with only a thin mattress on a concrete bed. He told Telemundo when his flight to Guantanamo on a military aircraft arrived, he and the other 177 Venezuelans were greeted by spider webs, ants and other insects.

"When we arrived there were even cobwebs. Those cells were in very bad conditions," Rodriguez said. "You could really see that no one had lived there for a long time. They didn't even clean [the cells] and there were ants."

The young migrant explained that little food was provided to him and his fellow prisoners and that the last meal of the day was at 4 p.m., which led him to lose 14 pounds during his stay. Furthermore, he said that officers would only let them shower once every three days, handcuffed and undergoing thorough inspections before and after those showers.

Interestingly, Rodriguez said that migrants with or without criminal history were treated the same.

"At Guantanamo there were people who didn't even enter the United States, that didn't even have tattoos. People who were truly not associated with any gangs, and they were still treated the same," he said. "They treated us all the same, we were discriminated against basically only for being Venezuelans."

Senior Trump officials have said that Guantanamo Bay is reserved for the "worst of the worst," but new court filings reveal that not all those who are being sent to the facility are considered to pose a "high threat," CNN reports.

Of the Guantanamo deportees, 126 people had criminal charges or convictions— including 80 allegedly affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua— a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. They added that 51 had no criminal record.

Trump said in January he planned to expand immigration detention facilities at Guantanamo to hold as many as 30,000 people, although the current capacity is around 2,500. The naval base is best known for housing suspects taken in after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but it also has been used for holding people caught trying to illegally reach the U.S. by boat to coordinate the resettlement of immigrants in the U.S., The Associated Press reports.

Venezuelan authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro has denied the citizens held at Guantanamo were criminals, saying the group that arrived last week "are not bad people, they were people who emigrated as a result of [U.S.] sanctions... in Venezuela we welcome them as a productive force, with a loving embrace."