Immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration on Saturday in hopes of stopping the transfer of immigrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay, according to the suit filed by multiple legal advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union.
The legal groups filed the lawsuit in Washington, D.C., federal court on behalf of 10 migrants who are in immigration custody in the U.S. and who they say are at “imminent risk” of being transferred to the American detention camp in Cuba without legal authority. The suit alleges the transfers are “arbitrary and capricious” and violate federal law and the U.S. Constitution, citing the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.
The individuals who are at risk of transfer and detention at Guantanamo include seven Venezuelan nationals, one Afghan national, one Pakistani national and one Bangladeshi national.
“They all have final orders of removal and may [be] transferred at any time, placing them at immediate risk of harm, including the denial of access to the outside world and the likelihood of being subject to horrific, punitive conditions at Guantánamo,” the advocacy groups alleged in their request for an emergency stay in the transfer of the 10 individuals.
In the suit, the groups said they aren’t challenging the administration’s authority to “detain the individuals on U.S. soil or to directly remove them to their home country or another statutorily authorized country” but the “government’s unprecedented and unlawful decision to transfer and detain them at Guantanamo.”
The groups added, “Never before has the federal government moved noncitizens apprehended and detained in the United States on civil immigration charges to Guantánamo. Nor is there any legitimate reason to do so now. The government has ample detention capacity inside the United States, which is far less costly and poses none of the logistical hurdles attendant to detaining people on Guantánamo.”
Lee Gelernt, the lead counsel in the case and the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, referred to the move as “theatrics.”
“Sending immigrants to a remote abusive prison is not only illegal and unprecedented, but illogical given the additional cost and logistical complications. Ultimately this is about theatrics,” Gelernt said in a statement.
According to the ACLU, the 10 individuals are not gang members and are not “high risk criminal aliens,” which is the language at the heart of President Donald Trump’s executive order allowing migrants to be transferred to Guantanamo.
The government has not provided any notice of when transfers will occur or who will be transferred. But some of these men have already been threatened with transfer to Guantanamo, the ACLU said.
The groups added in the filing that “the government has refused to provide notice of transfers to Guantánamo, so they can occur at any moment.”
Last month, the groups filed a suit against the government on behalf of detainees’ family members and groups that provide immigration legal services, claiming the government thwarted “access to counsel for immigrant detainees” who were transferred from the U.S. and held at Guantanamo, according to the complaint.
In response to the lawsuit, the administration revealed it had detained 178 migrants from Venezuela at Guantanamo Bay. A senior administration official told NBC News last month that all detainees held there were cleared from the facility. Over 170 Venezuelan migrants were deported and one was returned to detention in the U.S. shortly after the administration had begun housing migrants at the facility.
“Nothing in U.S. law authorizes ICE to detain people in foreign countries, but that appears to be of no concern to the Trump administration,” Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement. “For an administration that has been touting supposed efficiency with taxpayer dollars, President Trump seems eager to waste money on unnecessary and unlawful mistreatment of immigrants.”
