The American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the Trump administration from transferring 10 migrants from the U.S. to a naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detailing harsh conditions and suicide attempts among migrants held there. The ACLU said the transfers violate U.S. immigration law by moving the detainees outside of the country and aim to stoke fear without a legitimate rationale, Reuters reports. The 10 detainees in the lawsuit are men from Venezuela, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan with final deportation orders, including some who have been threatened with transfer to Guantanamo, ACLU said.
The men, currently held in Texas, Arizona and Virginia, are not gang members or high-risk criminals, the ACLU said. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the ACLU legal challenge "baseless" and said the agency fight the lawsuit. President Trump has vowed to deport record numbers of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. As part of efforts to expand deportations, the administration in early February began sending migrants to a detention camp on the U.S. 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 effort was the first to transfer migrants there from the U.S., Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the U.S. is sending "the worst of the worst" to Guantanamo, but a third of the initial group of 177 Venezuelans had no criminal record.