Zhihua Suarez said he was working on the roof of his home. He was standing up when a security guard arrived.

“A security guard went up to me and said police have surrounded us. I opened the front door and went outside and that’s when I heard gunshots,” he told The Guardian newspaper.

Mr Suarez said he escaped to use his phone because he was in the process of leaving to go to bed, but fell asleep again.

“We were just asleep and it is so crazy here in Puerto Cumbre,” he said. “We want our home back.”

A security guard later confirmed that Mr Suarez and four others had been arrested for protesting, though not Mr Suarez himself.

“They found a large number of leaflets with the word’refugees’ written on them,” security guard Felipe Soto said.

Mr Suarez said one of the detained protesters, Eduardo Crespo, 21, has been jailed for two days. He had been detained several days earlier after an attack on the police headquarters by people calling themselves Criollo, which translates as “revenge”, according to TV3 news channel.

According to Mr Soto, the police were told of the protests when Mr Crespo ran up with a knife, asking them to come and get him. The detainees were told that Mr Crespo had attacked the police.

“They said if you hurt our brothers, we’ll take care of you,” he said.

‘Anxiety and distress’

Some of the demonstrators say they have been involved in protest actions before but they had never seen anything like what was happening the moment the government announced migrants would have 48 hours to apply for asylum or risk their lives or being deported.

As many as 10,000 migrants with asylum claims have arrived in Puerto Cumbre in recent days. Police have also been investigating another group of protesters from the same centre. The Guardian said there was also a rumour among detainees that they had been arrested on Saturday.

Ms Torres, the local representative of the Association for the Support of the Asylumes, said: “They [police] are harassing them all the day and night. They say they do not give any information and we do not expect them to speak until the end.”

Police have not yet responded to a request for comment.