A federal district court judge late Friday denied a temporary restraining order request from legal advocacy groups seeking access to their clients while they were detained at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, following a last-minute transfer by the Trump administration, News From The States reports.
Because there are no longer any detainees at Guantanamo, the request was denied by U.S. District of Columbia Judge Carl J. Nichols, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019.
He also denied a request in a separate suit brought before him to bar the potential transfer of 10 individual detainees to Guantanamo because it had not happened yet and therefore could not constitute irreparable harm.
“None of these 10 plaintiffs is currently detained at Guantanamo Bay,” Nichols said of the second request.
Nichols is hearing both cases related to immigration detention at Guantanamo after Trump directed his administration to prepare for up to 30,000 beds there to be used for detention space as part of his plans for mass deportations.
The first suit argued the Trump administration denied legal access to migrants at the base.
The second challenged the legal authority of the Trump administration to send immigrants on U.S. soil and without legal status to a military base outside the country.
The second suit also included the request to block 10 detainees’ potential transfer. Nichols said he was skeptical the detainees would fit the “high profile” that would warrant detention at the base.
Taken to Louisiana
The American Civil Liberties Union filed both suits on behalf of legal aid groups for the immigrants and their family members.
Within days of the hearing, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred all detainees — including the ones whose family filed suits on behalf of them — from Guantanamo to the U.S. mainland in Louisiana.
The ACLU’s Lee Gelernt, who argued on behalf of the advocacy groups and families and 10 individuals, said the federal government has twice cleared out all migrants from Guantanamo just before court hearings.
Even though there are now no immigrants at the base, there is irreparable harm because detainees have been chained, strip searched and subjected to “the general trauma of being sent to a military base,” Gelernt said.
He argued that it’s unprecedented for an administration to transfer detainees already on U.S. soil to a military base.
Gelernt argued that the Trump administration was using detention at Guantanamo Bay “for general deterrence.”
He noted how highly publicized the administration had made transfers to the base, distributing photos and using military planes.
Judge skeptical
Nichols seemed skeptical the Trump administration had admitted to using detention as an immigration deterrent.
“They’re saying mass removal is the deterrent, not sending people to Gitmo,” Nichols said.
Nichols also raised issue with the family members who filed on behalf of the men who were taken to Guantanamo Bay. He said that because those detainees are back on U.S. soil, they should be allowed to bring their own suit.
Additionally, he said because those individuals were no longer at Guantanamo, the harm of the family members “has already subsided.”
However, Nichols said that “there’s a serious question on the government’s authority to open detention facilities (that) extends to military bases overseas.”
Nichols also told U.S. Department of Justice attorneys that the court should be notified if one of the 10 individuals in the suit trying to bar the government from sending those detainees to Guantanamo is transferred to the naval base.
Gelernt pressed to have the Department of Justice give notice before any transfer occurred, but Nichols held off on immediately doing that.
Nichols asked the Department of Justice attorneys to determine with the Department of Homeland Security how quickly a notification can be made to the court and asked them to report back an answer by Wednesday.
Last month, a judge in New Mexico blocked the Trump administration from moving three men detained in that state to Guantanamo. Less than 24 hours after the judge blocked the transfer, ICE deported the three men back to Venezuela.
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