On Saturday, immigrant rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, sued the Trump administration. They want to stop the transfer of immigrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay.
The legal groups filed this lawsuit in a federal court in Washington, D.C. They did this on behalf of 10 migrants. These migrants are in immigration custody in the U.S. The groups say these 10 are at “imminent risk” of being moved to the American detention camp in Cuba. And they say this would happen without legal permission. The lawsuit claims that these transfers are “arbitrary and capricious”. It also says they break federal law and the U.S. Constitution. The lawsuit points to the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.
The people at risk of being transferred and detained at Guantanamo are from different countries. There are seven Venezuelans, one Afghan, one Pakistani, and one Bangladeshi.
The advocacy groups said in their request to stop the transfer of these 10 people. “They all have final orders of removal. They could be transferred at any time. This puts them at immediate risk of harm. They could be cut off from the outside world. And they might have to face terrible, punishing conditions at Guantánamo.”
In the lawsuit, the groups said they are not against the administration’s right to “detain these people on U.S. soil or send them directly back to their home country or another country allowed by law”. But they are against “the government’s new and illegal decision to transfer and detain them at Guantanamo”.
The groups also said, “The federal government has never before moved non – citizens, who were caught and detained in the U.S. on civil immigration charges, to Guantanamo. And there’s no good reason to do it now. The U.S. has enough space to detain people. It’s also cheaper and has no logistical problems like detaining people in Guantanamo.”
Lee Gelernt, the main lawyer in the case and the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, called this move “theatrics”.
Gelernt said in a statement, “Sending immigrants to a far – away, abusive prison is not only illegal and new, but it doesn’t make sense because of the extra cost and logistical problems. In the end, this is just for show.”
According to the ACLU, these 10 people are not gang members. They are also not “high – risk criminal aliens”. That’s the term in President Donald Trump’s executive order that allows migrants to be transferred to Guantanamo.
The government hasn’t said when the transfers will happen or who will be transferred. But the ACLU said some of these men have already been threatened with transfer to Guantanamo.
The groups also said in the filing, “The government won’t say when transfers to Guantanamo will happen, so they could happen at any time.”
Last month, the groups sued the government for detainees’ family members and groups that offer immigration legal services. They said the government stopped “immigrant detainees from getting legal help” when they were transferred from the U.S. and held at Guantanamo.
In response to the lawsuit, the administration said it had detained 178 Venezuelan migrants at Guantanamo Bay. A senior administration official told NBC News last month that all the detainees there had been removed from the facility. Over 170 Venezuelan migrants were deported. And one was sent back to detention in the U.S. soon after the administration started housing migrants there.
Arthur Spitzer, a senior counsel at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement, “U.S. law doesn’t allow ICE to detain people in foreign countries. But the Trump administration doesn’t seem to care. For an administration that talks about using taxpayer money well, President Trump seems ready to waste money on wrongly treating immigrants.”
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