A coalition of immigrant rights and legal aid organizations has sued the Trump administration to try to stop the transfer of migrants from the United States to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Saturday’s lawsuit does not challenge the U.S. government’s authority to detain migrants on U.S. soil, or to deport them directly to their home country or another country allowed under immigration law. Instead, the American Civil Liberties Union and its partner civil rights groups — the Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project, and ACLU of the District of Columbia — argue that it is illegal for the U.S. to first send those migrants to Guantánamo.
The suit maintains that there is no legitimate reason to do that because the government has ample detention capacity inside the United States, and because holding migrants in the U.S. is more financially and operationally practical.
The lawsuit alleges that the reason the Trump administration is sending migrants to Guantánamo is to “instill fear in the immigrant population.”
“Sending inmates to a remote abusive prison is not only illegal and unprecedented, but illogical given the additional cost and logistical complications,” Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement. “Ultimately this is about theatrics.”