A coalition of civil liberties and immigrant rights groups are suing to get access to immigrants transferred from the U.S. to detention at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba under President Trump‘s recent order.
The big picture: The lawsuit filed Wednesday is the latest legal challenge to the Trump administration’s moves for mass detentions and mass deportations of immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.
Driving the news: The groups filed suit in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of several plaintiffs, including the sister of one of the men being detained at Guantánamo.
- While the Trump administration has widely publicized images of people it now detains at Guantánamo, it has also cut off any means of communication with them, the groups allege in court documents.
- The complaint alleges that, without the court’s intervention, more immigrants will be transferred to “this legal black hole” without access to counsel or any means of vindicating their rights.
- The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and ACLU of the District of Columbia are the groups that filed the lawsuit.
Catch up quick: President Trump announced in a memorandum late last month plans to house at Guantánamo Bay up to 30,000 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally as part of his immigration crackdown.
- The White House directed the secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security “to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity.”
Yes, but: A federal court temporarily blocked the Trump administration on Sunday from sending three Venezuelan men from immigration detention in New Mexico to the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
- The men are currently being held at Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico and “have a pending case before the court challenging their unlawfully prolonged detention,” according to the statement that says they faced the risk of “imminent transfer to the island prison.”
A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to Axios for comment.
Zoom in: A coalition of immigrant rights and legal groups sent a letter to the secretaries of Defense, State, and Homeland Security last week expressing their serious concern about the detention of immigrants in Guantánamo.
- The groups requested immediate access to them. The groups say they took legal action after getting no response from the Trump administration.
What they’re saying: “The Trump administration cannot be allowed to build upon Guantánamo’s sordid past with these latest cruel, secretive, and illegal maneuvers,” Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in a statement.
- “Our Constitution does not allow the government to hold people incommunicado, without any ability to speak to counsel or the outside world.”
- “By hurrying immigrants off to a remote island cut off from lawyers, family, and the rest of the world, the Trump administration is sending its clearest signal yet that the rule of law means nothing to it,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said.
Between the lines: Holding immigrants in facilities is by far the largest cost of the deportation process.
- An Axios review of various estimates put yearly detention costs at $66 billion under Trump’s possible mass deportation plan.
- ICE only has about 38,000 people in detention — prioritizing noncitizens the border patrol arrested at the Southwest border and noncitizens with criminal histories, according to ICE’s annual report.
A backlog of 3.7 million cases in immigration courts, where immigrants are entitled to make their case to stay in the country, means detained immigrants could wait months, if not years, for their hearing.
Zoom out: There were still 15 prisoners being held at Guantánamo Bay as of the Pentagon’s Jan. 6 update, but a separate facility will hold immigrants.
