Washington — A group of advocates led by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday asking a federal court to quickly require the Trump administration to give the migrant detainees it is holding at Guantanamo Bay access to lawyers.
Complying with an order from President Trump late last month, U.S. officials have been transporting dozens of unauthorized migrants to the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using military aircraft. Administration officials have said the detainees will be held there until they can be deported.
In its 29-page lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., the ACLU said those detained at Guantanamo have a right under the Constitution and federal immigration law to see legal counsel, and accused the Trump administration of holding them “incommunicado.” The group demanded that lawyers be given immediate access to the migrant detainees there, virtually and in-person.
“Sending immigrants to a remote island without access to attorneys is shocking, and if permitted by the courts, would set a dangerous precedent,” Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who filed the lawsuit, told CBS News in a statement.
The request for a temporary restraining order was filed on behalf of several relatives of migrants believed to be detained at Guantanamo, as well as four legal services providers in Texas and Florida that want to offer them representation.
“The government has announced its goal of sending tens of thousands of immigrants to Guantánamo in the near future,” the lawsuit reads. “Without this Court’s intervention, even more immigrants will be transferred to this legal black box without access to counsel or any means of vindicating their rights.”
Asked for comment on the ACLU’s lawsuit, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said there’s “a system for phone utilization to reach lawyers” at Guantanamo Bay.
“If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens including murderers & vicious gang members than they do about American citizens — they should change their name,” McLaughlin wrote in an email.
When Mr. Trump directed officials to establish the necessary facilities at Guantanamo Bay to hold as many as 30,000 migrant detainees, he said they would house the “worst” migrants and “high-priority criminal aliens.”
So far, U.S. military planes have transported roughly 100 migrant detainees to Guantanamo Bay, all of them Venezuelan adults. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has called the detainees sent to the base “the worst of the worst,” saying they include gang members and criminals who have committed serious crimes like rape and murder.
While officials and internal government documents indicate the administration has sent suspected gang members and migrants with criminal records to Guantanamo, they also show the administration has sent other detainees deemed to be nonviolent and “low-risk.”
