The Trump administration’s continued deportation of immigrants to the U.S. naval base and detention center on Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is being challenged by a group of civil rights organizations.
Earlier this month, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and ACLU of the District of Columbia filed an emergency motion to halt the transfer of 10 immigrants who had been given their final deportation orders to Guantánamo Bay. The groups argue that, when immigrants were first detained at Guantánamo Bay, their legal representatives and family members had minimal to no contact with them: they were held “incommunicado.” Now, because of legal challenges, those who are detained on Guantánamo have some access to phone use, and there is better record-keeping detailing whether they are on the island.
The Trump administration contends that it is detaining criminally dangerous immigrants on Guantánamo who came to the U.S. and stayed here illegally. In February, the Department of Defense used military aircraft to fly what it termed “high-threat illegal alien” members of the Venezuelan “Tren de Aragua” gang to Cuba. Pictures emerged of these deportees as they were shackled and led aboard a C-17 aircraft.
The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration has replied to the new lawsuit by contending that detainees are being treated with “dignity and respect,” but contends that the “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has broad authority to hold immigrants with final removal orders at Guantánamo Bay ‘for only so long as their removal remains significantly likely to occur in the reasonably foreseeable future.’”
The civil rights lawsuit argues that detaining immigrants on Guantánamo who have overstayed their visas, which is a civil offense, is excessively punitive. “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 complaint argues. “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.”
On Mar. 10, the Associated Press reported that immigrants from 27 countries are currently being detained there. “Court filings on behalf of the Homeland Security and Defense departments indicated that 40 immigrants with final deportation orders were being held at Guantánamo Bay as of Friday [Mar. 7] — with 23 labeled ‘high risk’ and held individually in cells. The remainder were held in another area of special housing for migrants, in groups of up to six,” AP reported.
“A lot turns on what the administration’s real, genuine intent is with this place,” Shayana Kadidal, the CCR’s senior managing attorney, told the AmNews. “The initial program of bringing immigration detainees there seems to have been intended to produce terror in all potential immigrants and all immigration detainees held here in the United States. It was to encourage people to accept final deportation orders and accept deportation to their home countries without putting up a fight because they were concerned with being sent to the quote-unquote ‘worst prison on Earth’ –– which is what Guantánamo’s reputation is, thanks to all the torture that was practiced just on the military detainees there during the Bush administration.”
According to Kadidal, detainees were moved to Guantánamo “to dissuade people who might come to the United States from coming to the United States and to dissuade people who were already picked up and in immigration detention stateside from fighting whatever the administration wanted to do to them.”
Kadidal added that “a third purpose is to put pressure on countries that were either slow-rolling or refusing to take back people who had final deportation orders here in the U.S. — to put pressure on those countries to take their people back.”