Wualner Sauceda talked about what it was like to be sent back to Honduras from the United States from the small living room of a house tucked away in a small, remote town.
Sauceda, 24, was a new science teacher at Palms Spring Middle School in Hialeah, Florida, when he was arrested in early January and sent back to his home country a month later.
Sauceda said, “I applied for asylum, and the process took a few years.”
In the end, his request for refuge was turned down, and his appeal didn’t go anywhere, he told NBC6 in Miami in a two-part exclusive interview.
He wanted to stay in the country legally, so he looked for other ways to do so.
Sauceda had to check in with immigration officials because his immigration situation wasn’t clear.
Previous visits went smoothly, and officials would usually set up a follow-up meeting.
Because he had to go to the Miramar immigration office in South Florida on January 7, he missed school. He said that this time felt different.
She said, “I got there at 8 a.m. and saw that it was 1 p.m., then 2 p.m., and then 3 p.m.”
After that, he was told to leave his car in the lot. When he got inside the government building, he asked the guards what was going on.
Sauceda said, “They told me, ‘You’re detained.'” He also said it was so shocking that he couldn’t tell his parents. He called an uncle instead so that uncle could tell the rest of the family.
He said, “Emotionally, it was hard for me.”
Sauceda now lives in the country with his uncle and his maternal grandparents, three hours northeast of Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras. The family depends on some of the food they grow and the animals they raise because they live near dirt roads and mountains.
This is different from the United States because most, if not all, of the homes there don’t have heat or running water.
They get their water from a nearby river. They wash and take baths in it. The water they drink comes from a well.
Sauceda was used to the ease of life in South Florida, even though he had grown up there until he was 13.
Sauceda said, “I was born here” in Honduras. He also said that he and his cousin left their home country because a close family member had been killed. Moving to the U.S. as a teenager is still a very clear memory.
“He remembered crossing the river,” and he finally got back to his parents, who were already in South Florida.
In eighth grade, he went to Henry H. Filer Middle School in Hialeah. After that, he went to Westland Hialeah Senior High School.
Sauceda said of his early school years, “I felt like I could do things I never thought I could do.” He learnt English very quickly, and by his final year, he was taking more difficult classes.
“I remember proudly taking honours English for seniors, honours pre-calculus, and honours history. I really liked that because I went from ESOL level 1 to ESOL level 4,” he said.
Even though his visa case was still going on, he wanted more.
Sauceda said, “Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to be a teacher.”
He first thought about becoming a maths teacher, but in the end he decided to become a science teacher and began his college job at Miami-Dade College.
But college was expensive because he couldn’t work without a work permit and it was hard for undocumented students to find grant money.
But he found TheDream.us, a group that says it has given more than 10,000 scholarships to kids who don’t have papers.
Sauceda made applications to both Florida International University and the University of Central Florida. He was accepted to both, but he decided to go to FIU because it was closer to his family.
Sauceda graduated in December 2023 with a 3.4 GPA and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a focus on teaching.
He was proud and excited to show off his diploma from FIU. “I was even happier when I got my certificate to teach.”
After a month, he was able to get a job as a teacher at Miami-Dade Public Schools.
He told NBC6 that he was a little scared because he wasn’t a U.S. citizen or permanent resident, but he did have a social security number, which is how he applied for a teacher’s license.
It was always a worry, not just at work but in life in general, and it might have been a sign of things to come.
After being arrested, he was taken to the Broward Transitional Centre in Pompano Beach, which is a place where refugees are held. Sauceda thinks he spent more than 20 days at the centre.
Ivan Torres Hidalgo Gato, his lawyer, asked for suspended action, but Sauceda said it didn’t work.
NBC6 called Hidalgo Gato to find out more about Sauceda’s case, but he told us he wasn’t interested in giving us any information.
Sauceda said that the customs officer who held him would always be in his mind.
As Sauceda put it, “he said he was told to start putting people on that plane.”
He was first held when President Joe Biden was in office, but he was sent back to his home country on February 6, soon after President Donald Trump took office.
Sauceda remembered being taken to a centre in Louisiana, which he said was a terrible time. That there were too many people in the rooms—60 people when each room was meant to hold 24 people—he said.
“I remember that the mattresses were moved to the floor, and I slept on the bed’s metal frame,” Sauceda said. “But the room would be very, very hot during the day and very, very cold at night. I don’t know if they did that on purpose, but it was awful.”
Sauceda remembered being chained around the waist, hands, and feet before being put on a trip to Honduras to be sent back to El Salvador.
He said, “It shocked me because I had never been through anything like that before.” “It breaks my heart to think about it sometimes,” Sauceda said, voice level but clearly moved.
As part of their four-part series on Sauceda’s case, NBC6 in Miami will show two more interviews next week.
