Migrants from 27 countries remain in the American naval base in Guantanamo, according to judicial documents in which Immigration officials and US military authorities defend their authority to operate the detention center in the enclave.
The United States immigration and military authorities reported that migrants from 27 countries are arrested in the American naval base prison in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, and revealed new details about confinement conditions, in addition to defending government authority to transfer and keep immigrants in the military enclave.
Judicial documents presented on behalf of the National Security and Defense departments indicated that, until Friday, 40 immigrants with final deportation orders were detained at the Guantanamo base, of which 23 were labeled as “high risk” and kept individually in cells.
The rest was in another area of special accommodation in groups of up to six.
Civil rights lawyers sued the Government of Donald Trump this month to prevent it from transferring to 10 migrants arrested in the US to Guantanamo, and presented statements of men arrested there who claimed to have been mistreated in conditions that one of them described as “a living hell.”
In response to the lawsuit, the lawyers of the Department of Justice argued on Monday that the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE, in English) has a wide authority to keep migrants in Guantanamo with orders of final deportation, “while its expulsion remains significantly probable in the reasonably close future.”
American immigration and military authorities “do not need to demonstrate that (the Guantanamo Naval Station) is essential for that plan, logistically simple, or that it is the least expensive option,” according to judicial documents.
US government lawyers also stated that “the Government does not dispute that mass expulsion programs are partly destined to deter illegal immigration.”
New written testimonies of military and ICE leaders indicate that those arrested in Guantanamo are being “treated with dignity and respect”, and describe access to legal advice, regular meals, laundry service and medical care such as “not different from other ICE detention facilities.”
Government's testimonies also recognize that the jail of the Naval Base is not attending to requests for visits in person by legal advisors, and that some detainees refused to eat, while others have been placed shackles in hands and legs after threatening to harm.
Reviews without clothes are made to the “high -risk” detainees upon arrival, and “cacheo” records when migrants leave certain retention areas.
Personal phone calls are allowed up to 5 minutes every day, and the conversations are monitored by ICE, authorities reported.
Trump has said that he will send the worst foreign criminals to Guantanamo, although civil rights lawyers claim that several of the detainees transferred there have no serious criminal record.
There are no more Venezuelans
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer from the American Union of Civil Libertads (ACLU) in the case of immigrants seeking to block transfers to Guantanamo, acknowledged that the Oenegé does not have a complete list of immigrants detained at the base or their countries of origin. He refused to comment more before a judicial hearing of the case.
The 10 men involved in the demand arrived in the United States in 2023 or 2024, seven of them from Venezuela, and the others from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Trump said in January that he wanted to expand immigrant detention facilities in Guantanamo to house up to 30,000 people, and his government began sending migrants there on February 4.
Initially, almost 200 Venezuelan migrants were transferred to Guantanamo, and then sent back to their country of origin. There were no Venezuelans arrested in Guantanamo until Friday.
Although the United States naval base in Cuba is better known by the suspects carried after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has a small separate installation used for decades to keep migrants.
Tent have been installed with capacity to house 520 people, but they are not yet in use. Migrants are also being arrested in an average security installation modeled according to the United States prisons.
The Migrant Detention Center operates separately from the Military Detention Center and the Courts for foreigners detained during what the presidency of George W. Bush called “War on terrorism.”
(With information from The Associated Press)