EXCLU:‘They were beating me, squeezing my neck:’ Trapped and ‘stateless’ in Trump’s deportation machine
Death, detainment and deportation continues to grow in Trump’s America. “Failed deportations” of “stateless” people is just one of the results.
Today, we have an incredibly important story from American Doom contributor Chloe Hall about the strange and troubling case of a man caught up in Donald Trump’s deportation machine. I hope you’ll read it. You won’t find this reporting anywhere else, so if you support this work, please consider a paid subscription or a contribution to our Coffee Fund. - jg
Aliaksei Scharbaechenia described the ICE agents who he says beat him unconscious in a Turkish airport as having a “dog collar.” Scharbaechenia, 37, says he “braced” for what was about to come. One agent allegedly beat him over the head before another put him in a chokehold.
“I blacked out for a while,” Scharbaechenia wrote in June with the help of Free Them All VA, an immigrant advocacy organization. The collar was then used to restrain Scharbaechenia as his “body was placed on a cart” and loaded onto a plane back to Washington D.C., the subject of a “failed deportation.”
“Everytime I close my eyes, it still comes back to me when they were beating me, squeezing my neck,” Shcharbachenia told American Doom. “I couldn’t breathe.”
Scharbaechenia fled his native Belarus in the spring of 2025 after he said he was targeted by government authorities for speaking out about corruption. He wound up in Florida where, in August 2025, he was arrested by U.S. immigration authorities and taken to the Farmville Detention Center in central Virginia.
Scharbaechenia languished at Farmville for nine months before ICE put him on a plane to send him back to Belarus — without having even seen an immigration judge, Scharbaechenia told American Doom. But Scharbaechenia refused to board a plane from Turkey to Belarus, for fear that he would again be targeted by government authorities. So, U.S. immigration agents took Scharbaechenia back to Farmville, where his case has been classified as a “failed deportation,” and his future is uncertain.
Scharbaechenia is now one of an undetermined number of “stateless” detainees inside the U.S. immigration detention network. While the number of stateless people living in the U.S. — roughly 218,000 — is known, it’s not clear how many stateless people are currently in ICE detention. While Scharbaechenia may be among a relatively small number of these stateless detainees, he is far from alone in criticizing conditions inside ICE facilities, which are expanding as President Donald Trump’s administration arrests and deports more immigrants than ever before.
More than 580,000 people have been arrested by ICE and other immigration agencies since the start of Trump’s second term. The Trump administration has deported more than 590,000 people and over 65,000 remain in detention centers across the U.S. Meanwhile, more immigrants have died in custody during the first two years of the Trump administration than any similar time period since ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, were created in 2003.
Meanwhile, at least 51 people have died in immigration custody or local jails under Trump, including several whose deaths remain deeply questionable, were the result of poor medical care, or have been declared homicides by local authorities, as American Doom previously reported. Another six people have died during ICE raids or stops — three were shot by ICE officers and three were injured while attempting to evade the agent.
Now, Scharbaechenia is back at Farmville, where he says access to medical care is lacking, and he and other detainees are punished with solitary confinement for speaking out about poor conditions.
“Nothing has changed,” Scharbaechenia told American Doom. “They refused to let me see the doctor. Things are not getting better.”
Beaten by U.S. agents in a foreign airport
On May 20, ICE escorted Scharbaechenia on a flight to Turkey, then to Azerbaijan, where he was supposed to transfer to a plane to his native Belarus — the final stop in his deportation. But Scharbaechenia refused to return to Belarus, saying that he had been targeted and followed while living there, and said people close to him had been targeted for speaking out about government corruption. Because of his participation in protests and criticisms of the government, returning to Belarus could result in persecution and potential death, he said.
In Azerbaijan, local authorities came to Scharbaechenia’s aid and stopped ICE from forcing him onto the plane to Belarus, he said. With help from the Azerbaijanis, Scharbaechenia boarded a plane back to Turkey.
After refusing to board a plane back to Washington D.C., Scharbaechenia was eventually taken to a holding cell in the Turkish airport, where U.S. immigration agents arrived. Scharbaechenia says the agents hit him over the head and placed him in a chokehold, causing him to lose consciousness.
“The ICE agents entered the room; I screamed for them not to touch me, but no one listened to me,” Scharbaechenia wrote. “I thrashed around like a cornered animal in the cage for 5–10 minutes until one of the ICE agents came up from behind and hit me on the back of the head; the next moment I was on the floor, and one of the ICE agents was choking me with both hands using a chokehold; I blacked out for a while, I couldn’t get enough air; I was suffocating. A second ICE agent put plastic ties on me, and my legs and arms were bound. I thought I was going to die; I couldn’t breathe, and my whole body felt weak.”
After the beating, Scharbaechenia was put on a plane to Washington D.C.
“Then a 9-hour flight,” Shcharbaechenia wrote. “Beaten, humiliated, sitting on the plane with my hands and feet bound, I thought for the first time in my life about how nice it would be if the plane crashed right now — this is torture.”
ICE and DHS did not respond to questions about Shcharbaechenia’s alleged beating, his treatment at Farmville, or the conditions there.
Now, it’s not clear what will happen to Shcharbaechenia. Failed deportations like his are rare but not uncommon, said Jeff Migliozzi of Freedom for Immigrants, an advocacy organization. Currently without a lawyer, the status of Shcharbaechenia’s immigration case is not known, according to a spokesperson for Free Them All VA.
But cases like Shcharbaechenia’s are the inevitable result of Trump’s mass deportation operation, in which agencies like ICE and others make “every shortcut possible” with “every guardrail eliminated,” Migliozzi told American Doom.
Isolation and poor conditions
Even before Shcharbaechenia’s traumatizing experience in Turkey, he faced poor conditions and punishment at Farmville, he says.
In March, Scharbaechenia wrote a letter to the ICE officials overseeing Farmville, describing dismal conditions there, including ill-equipped medical staff, lack of translation and legal resources, unavailability of kosher food, and freezing sleeping conditions.
Shcharbachenia blamed the conditions at Farmville for “serious and worsening ailments,” including a tumor on his right arm that went mostly untreated for months upon his arrival at the facility. Suffering from panic attacks, Shcharbachenia has been unable to access mental health treatment; without Russian translators, he has struggled to understand legal documents presented to him. Shcharbachenia says his panic attacks have been exacerbated by frigid temperatures in the facility, the result of air conditioning staying on even in the winter months.
In the close quarters of the rooms, Shcharbaechenia noted that many of the people coming in are sick, and even something as simple as covering his mouth gets him “called out by officers.” Shcharbachenia says he has been “punished for trying to bring attention to the crowded conditions.”
After sending his letter to ICE officials, Shcharbachenia was inexplicably taken to solitary confinement. Detainees at other facilities have complained of being punished by being placed in solitary, and the use of solitary confinement continues to grow under the Trump administration.
Shcharbaechenia’s complaints of poor conditions and lack of medical care at Farmville echo those made in ICE facilities nationwide abound. In May, 300 detainees launched hunger and labor strikes at the Delaney Hall detention centeri n Newark, New Jersey. The detainees complained of moldy and spoiled food and inadequate medical care. An attorney representing detainees there said her clients had been given “expired food and meals with worms in them.”
Some of the detainees who carried out the strike at Delaney Hall have alleged they were “beaten by ICE agents.”
Throughout Shcharbaechenia’s detainment at Farmville, he claims that the facility has had poor medical care. He has been denied mental health assistance multiple times, he said, In December, he developed “egg-sized tumors” on his arm, which he alleged have not been treated, causing him to lose sensation in his right pinky, Shcharbaechenia told American Doom.
After his alleged beating at the hands of ICE agents in Turkey, Shcharbachenia said that he had not been allowed to document the bruises or swelling he sustained from the incident or even see a doctor once he returned to Farmville. He complained of lumps on his head and recurring headaches.
“I think those two officers need to be punished,” Shcharbachenia said. “They have to take responsibility and abide by the law and should not act like that and treat people that way.”
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