US rights group sues to block migrants’ transfer to Gitmo
• Migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh among those threatened with transfer to the US naval base
• Court apprised of harsh conditions compelling inmates to attempt suicide
WASHINGTON: A US civil rights group has sued to block the Trump administration from potentially transferring 10 migrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Venezuela to a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detailing harsh conditions and suicide attempts among migrants held there.
The men, currently held in Texas, Arizona and Virginia, are not gang members or high-risk criminals, said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the lawsuit it filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. on Saturday.
The civil rights group argued that the transfers violate US immigration law by moving the detainees out of the country and aim to stoke fear without a legitimate rationale. The 10 detainees in the lawsuit are all men from Pakistan and three other countries with final deportation orders, including some who have been threatened with transfer to Guantanamo, ACLU said.
US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin on Saturday called the ACLU legal challenge “baseless” and said the agency would work with the Justice Department to fight the lawsuit.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, has vowed to deport record numbers of immigrants who are in the US illegally. As part of efforts to expand deportations, the administration in early February began sending migrants to a detention camp on the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, best known for holding foreign terrorism suspects.
Cuban and Haitian migrants intercepted at sea have been held at a migrant facility on the base for decades. However, the Trump administration’s effort was the first to transfer migrants there from the America, according to ACLU.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed they were sending only “the worst of the worst” to Guantanamo, but about a third of the initial group of 177 Venezuelans had no criminal record, according to the department.
The ACLU lawsuit apprised the court that migrants detained at Guantanamo had been “held in windowless rooms for at least 23 hours per day, subjected to invasive strip searches, and unable to contact family members”.
The suit said that guards “engage in verbal and physical abuse”, including strapping detainees to a chair, withholding water, threatening to shoot detainees, and fracturing one person’s hand. “These degrading conditions and extreme isolation have led to several suicide attempts,” the complaint said.
A federal judge blocked the possible transfer of several Venezuelan migrants to Guantanamo in mid-February, but the men — also represented by ACLU — were then deported to Venezuela.
Published in Dawn, March 3rd, 2025