The Trump administration sent a new group of migrants to a US military base in Cuba's Guantanamo Bay on Thursday to await deportation, and argued that they could be tied to a Venezuelan gang, according to officials with knowledge of the operation.
The flight of the immigration and customs enforcement charter from El Paso said it transported around 20 people.
The transfer marked the first time the immigrants were placed on base since March 11th. The administration brought in 40 men who had temporarily returned to the United States. The relocation occurred days before the court hearing was heard in a lawsuit challenging the legality of President Trump's policy of keeping immigrant detainees there.
During the hearing, U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols of the District of Columbia refused to issue an order banning further relocation to the base, and the plaintiff expressed doubt that he would be successful in the case as there were no immigrants left at Guantanamo at the time.
The administration also empty bases for immigrant detainees on February 20th, but 177 Venezuelans took them to Honduras and handed them over to the Venezuelan government.
A spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security declined to respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Administration officials have generally described migrants sent to Guantanamo as dangerous and accused them of being a member of Venezuelan gangster Tren de Aragua. They provide no evidence to support these suspicions. Also, most immigrants whose identities were published had no criminal history in the United States.
Since January 29, the administration has sent 290 men (the majority of Venezuelans) to two detentions on the base as part of Trump's wider crackdown on illegal immigrants.
One of the sites known as Camp 6 is a military prison built 20 years ago to house suspected members of al-Qaeda. The other is a medium-sized dormitory building that is part of the Immigration Operations Centre.
The Trump administration deployed about 1,000 US government workers in immigration operations. 900 of them are members of the US military, and 100 are civilian employees, including 70 contractors for the Department of Homeland Security.
On March 15, the Trump administration flew 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, handed them over to the Salvador government, putting them in high-security prisons.
The administration portrays all these men as members of Tren de Aragua. Many of them were transferred without individual immigration hearings after Trump claimed he had the authority to do so under the Wartime Act, known as the Alien Enemy Act of 1798.
The judge has temporarily ordered the administration not to deport immigrants under the law, and the Trump administration is suing the order.
Eric Schmidt Reports of contributions.
