A federal judge ruled against plaintiffs who challenged the Trump administration’s ability to transfer immigrants who are not legally in the country to the U.S. military base in Cuba, known as Guantánamo Bay, Scripps News reports. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols in Washington, D.C., ruled that the plaintiffs did not meet the proper burden of proof to obtain two separate temporary restraining orders. The first TRO would have required the Trump administration to give additional access to the military base to attorneys and the second TRO would’ve prevented the Trump administration from transferring additional undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo. Immigrant rights groups filed two lawsuits. The first asserted that the U.S. government prevented attorneys from gaining access to and communicating with detainees being held at Guantánamo. “By doing so, the U.S. government has prevented immigrants from accessing legal assistance to understand their rights and to challenge their transfer and detention or conditions of confinement at Guantánamo,” attorneys wrote.
Both sides acknowledged that accommodations had been made to allow attorneys to connect with clients if and when detainees are transferred to Guantánamo. Attorneys also wanted Nichols to allow attorneys to visit clients who were being detained at Guantanamo, but the court countered that there could be logistical hurdles in allowing attorneys to visit detainees on the military base. But by the time of Friday’s hearing, the U.S. government had removed all detainees who were transferred from the U.S. from the base. It. was revealed in court that all but one of the detainees were transferred back to their home countries. While issuing his order declining the first TRO request, Nichols explained that the family members of the former detainees, who filed the lawsuits on behalf of their relatives, could not experience irreparable harm because their relatives were no longer in custody.