The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the Trump administration Wednesday to achieve entry to migrants being housed at a facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“By hurrying immigrants off to a remote island cut off from lawyers, family, and the rest of the world, the Trump administration is sending its clearest signal yet that the rule of law means nothing to it. It will now be up to the courts to ensure that immigrants cannot be warehoused on offshore islands,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Undertaking, stated in an announcement.
Trump administration officers are quickly transferring ahead with President Trump’s directive to show Guantánamo Bay right into a facility that would maintain as much as 30,000 migrants who’re being deported from the USA.
The transfer makes use of the identical facility in Cuba that has been used to accommodate navy prisoners, together with a number of al Qaeda operatives linked to the 9/11 assaults.
The primary flight of migrants to Guantánamo Bay occurred final week, with a small variety of people arriving Wednesday.
The swimsuit argues that migrants have a proper to habeas corpus — to problem the legality of their detention — in addition to the Immigration and Nationality Act, which provides detained migrants the appropriate to entry their very own counsel.
It additionally stated the detention violates their First Modification rights to free speech and their Fifth Modification rights to due course of.
The swimsuit was filed on behalf of quite a few teams that work with migrant populations.
“Even within the face of great public concern about this unprecedented motion, the federal government has provided no authorized authority for the switch of people in immigration custody from inside the USA to Guantánamo,” it reads.
“Although the government has widely publicized images of people it now detains at Guantánamo, it has also cut off any means of communication that these detained immigrants have with the outside world. Immigrants held at Guantánamo have effectively disappeared into a black box and cannot contact or communicate with their family or attorneys.”
The swimsuit was additionally filed on behalf of quite a few organizations that present authorized providers to migrants, alleging their First Modification rights have been violated.
“These activities are forms of political association and expression,” the swimsuit says.
