Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 migrants detained in the US to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and filed statements from men held there who said they were mistreated there in conditions that of one of them called “a living hell.”
The federal lawsuit came less than a month after the same attorneys sued for access to migrants who were already detained at the naval base in Cuba after living in the US illegally. Both cases are backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and filed in Washington.
The attorneys also filed statements translated from Spanish into English from two men still held at Guantanamo Bay, four men held there in February and sent back to Venezuela, and a Venezuelan migrant sent back to Texas.
The men said they were kept in small, windowless cells, with lights on around the clock, hindering sleep, and had inadequate food and medical care. One man reported attempting suicide there, and two said they knew of others’ attempts. The men said migrants were verbally and physically abused by staffers.
In another, separate federal lawsuit filed in New Mexico, a federal judge on Feb. 9 blocked the transfer of three immigrants from Venezuela being held in that state to Guantanamo Bay.
The White House and the Defense and Homeland Security departments did not immediately respond to emails Saturday seeking comment about the latest lawsuit. The two agencies are among the defendants.
Trump has promised mass deportations of immigrants living in the US illegally and has said Guantanamo Bay, also known as “Gitmo,” has space for up to 30,000 of them.
At least 50 migrants have been transferred already to Guantanamo Bay, and the civil rights attorneys believe the number now may be about 200. They have said it is the first time in US history that the government has detained noncitizens on civil immigration charges there. For decades, the naval base was primarily used to detain foreigners associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The 10 men involved in the latest lawsuit came to the US in 2023 or 2024, seven from Venezuela, and the others from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
