The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration to block the transfer of 10 illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay.
The migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Venezuela are currently being held in Texas, Virginia, and Arizona.
According to the ACLU, the transfers are “arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (‘APA’)” and “violate due process under the Fifth Amendment because the transfers are undertaken for punitive, illegitimate reasons and the conditions in which the detainees are housed are unconstitutional,” the lawsuit says.
Noting that the challenge is not against the “government’s authority to detain them on U.S. soil or to directly remove them to their home country or another statutorily authorized country,” the ACLU argues that the lawsuit centers on the “government’s unprecedented and unlawful decision to transfer and detain them at Guantánamo, which under the INA is Cuba.”
The ACLU further claims the matter is “per se illegal, even apart from the horrific detention conditions and the lack of meaningful access to counsel or the outside world.”
The group filed another lawsuit against Guantanamo Bay transfers last month, alleging the Trump administration attempted to “thwart access to counsel for immigrant detainees.”
“The government has also withheld information regarding the legal basis for these individuals’ transfers and confinement at Guantánamo, the likelihood of their continued detention, the immigration status of the transferred individuals, the nature of any legal proceedings against them, the conditions of their confinement, and the government’s treatment of and plans for these individuals,” the February lawsuit said.
