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.
“It was easy to lose the will to live,” said Raul David Garcia, a former Guantanamo detainee sent back to Venezuela. “I had been kidnapped in Mexico before, and at least my captors there told me their names.”
Another former detainee sent back to Venezuela, Jonathan Alejandro Alviares Armas, reported that fellow detainees were sometimes denied water or “tied up in a chair outside our cells for up to several hours” as punishment, including for protesting conditions.
“Guantanamo is a living hell,” he said.
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.
Trump says Guantanamo Bay can hold thousands of ‘the worst’.
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.
He also has said he plans to send “the worst” or high-risk “criminal aliens” to the base in Cuba. The administration has not released specific information on who is being transferred, so it is not clear what crimes they are accused of committing in the US and whether they have been convicted in court, or merely been charged or arrested.
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.
A separate military detention center once held 800 people, but that number has dwindled to 15, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Critics have said for years that the center is notorious for poor conditions for detainees. A 2023 report from a United Nations inspector said detainees faced “ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” though the US rejected much of her criticism.
Migrants say they were tortured or threatened before coming to the US
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.
The lawsuit said the Afghan and Pakistani migrants were fleeing threats from the Taliban, and two of the Venezuelans had been tortured by the government there for their political views. One of the Venezuelans, Walter Estiver Salazar, said government officials kidnapped him after he refused to follow an order to cut off his town’s electricity.
“The officials beat me, suffocated me, and eventually shot me,” he said. “I barely survived.”
Salazar said he had been convicted in the US of driving under the influence, “which I deeply regret,” while another of the Venezuelans said charges against him tied to a domestic dispute had been dropped.
The men’s attorneys allege that many of the people who have been sent to Guantanamo Bay do not have serious criminal records or even any criminal history.
Four Venezuelans said they had been falsely accused of being gang members based on their tattoos, including one who said his tattoo was of a Catholic rosary.
Transfer to Guantanamo violates constitutional right, attorneys say.
The latest lawsuit contends that the transfers violate the men’s right to due legal process, guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.
The lawsuit also argues that federal immigration law bars the transfer of non-Cuban migrants from the US to Guantanamo Bay; that the US government has no authority to hold people outside its territory; and the naval base remains part of Cuba legally. The transfers are also described as arbitrary.
Their first lawsuit, filed Feb. 12, said Guantanamo Bay detainees had “effectively disappeared into a black box” and couldn’t contact attorneys or family. The Department of Homeland Security said they could reach attorneys by phone.
One of the formerly detained Venezuelans, Yoiker David Sequera, said he was permitted to make one phone call to the ACLU, but when he asked to speak with his family, he was told “it was not possible.”
A current detainee, Tilso Ramon Gomez Lugo, said that for two weeks he was not able to communicate “with anyone in the outside world” until he was allowed to make a single call to attorneys.
The lawsuit also argues that Guantanamo Bay “does not have the infrastructure” to hold even the 10 men. Garcia said a part of the base for migrants like him known as Camp 6, where he was confined, seemed “prepared at the last minute” and was “not even finished.”
“It was freezing, and I felt like chicken trapped in an incubator,” he said.
