The Trump administration faced the first direct legal challenge to its policy of sending immigrants to US military bases in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay and continued immigration detention in a lawsuit filed Saturday by a coalition of human rights and immigration advocacy groups.
“The plaintiff will halt and detain these cruel, unnecessary and illegal transfers in Guantanamo, seeking intervention from this court,” the newly filed complaint stated.
The plaintiff, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, is currently seeking judicial residence to stop the relocation of the 10 immigrants that the coalition has signed to represent. However, it appears to lay the foundation for a broader order for relocation policies that have raised many new legal issues.
The 10 migrants named in the lawsuit have each received a final removal order and are from countries including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Venezuela, he said. The lawsuit alleges that he is not a gang member, and some are threatened by a move to Guantanamo.
“In attempting to justify the relocation, the government claims that the individuals sent to Guantanamo are members of gangs and dangerous criminals, saying it is “the worst and worst.”
It continued: “Its properties are patently wrong. It is legally irrelevant because the government does not have statutory authority. Any Immigrant detainees from the United States to Guantanamo. ”
The Justice Department's Publishing Office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit does not first challenge aspects of President Trump's policy. Last month, a judge prevented the government from moving three Venezuelan men who were detained in New Mexico immigration detention to the base, and a group of legal aid organizations asked migrants taken there to have access to lawyers.
However, neither of these cases directly addressed the legality of the overall policy. The new lawsuit argues that immigration law exceeds the government's authority under the Immigration Nationality Act to bring it to Cuban soil, and that the government does not have the legal authority to bind people outside the United States for immigration purposes.
Calling such transfers “arbitrary and whimsical,” the lawsuit alleges that the policy violates the administrative procedures law and the due-process rights of immigrants.
“Not only is it illegal, it's completely illogical in terms of costs that this administration seems to care about,” said Lee Gerellund of the American Civil Liberties Union, the lead lawyer for the case. “The administration has a moment of Guantanamo's photo manipulation, and now it's time to move on.”
It was not clear whether taxpayers had a specific policy advantage in the costs incurred by migrants flying to remote island bases.
However, this operation generated a story that could send a message to suppress. This is the purpose that Hegseth appears to be hinting at when he visited the base last week with a former Fox News colleague.
“The message is clear. If you break the law, if you're a criminal, you can find your way in Guantanamo Bay,” Heggs told Fox. “I don't want to be in Guantanamo Bay, where al-Qaeda was housed after 9/11.”
Trump on January 29 directed the US military and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare to expand the Center for Immigration Operations in Guantanamo Bay, saying it would “provide additional detention space for prioritized criminal aliens that are illegally present in the United States.”
Soon after, the military began transporting immigrants to bases based on what became closer to daily flights from the immigration site in El Paso. Despite the Trump administration's portrayal as criminals, only a portion of the migrants identified as being moved to bases had criminal records.
The first 178 migrants taken there were all citizens of Venezuela and in a country that had deported people due to the collapse of their authoritarian government and relations with the United States.
However, the Trump administration has convinced Venezuela to get people back. On February 20th, it suddenly cleared up the detention work and sent 177 migrants to Honduras, where they were greeted by a Venezuelan plane and taken home. (One man had previously been returned to the US.)
The series of flights that began on February 23rd to February 23rd have since begun sending more migrants from other countries such as Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala and Ecuador, according to documents seen by the New York Times. They ranged from 23 to 62 years old.
As of Friday morning, the military had harbored 26 migrants in a dorm-style building handled by the Coast Guard. There, they housed people deemed “low-risk” and 17 men sent people deemed “high-risk” to a wartime prison called Camp 6.
Nine immigrants were sent back to the United States this week. Another flight arrived Friday afternoon, but the number of migrants on top of it and of the two holdings sent, is unknown.
The new case is likely to be handled by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols in Washington. Trump's appointee Judge Nichols was previously assigned a legal access lawsuit, and the coalition filed a new lawsuit as a related matter. Gelernt is also the lead lawyer for previous cases.
