'Moral Crisis for This Nation': Trump Sued Over Access to Gitmo Prisoners Held 'Illegally' Offshore

A coalition of civil liberties and immigrant rights groups have sued the Trump administration for detaining migrants incommunicado at the offshore prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after they were initially taken into custody in the United States.

The lawsuit—filed Wednesday in federal court by the ACLU, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and ACLU of the District of Columbia—was brought on behalf of several plaintiffs, including the sister of a Venezuelan man being held at the facility. It demands that all those being detained have immediate access to legal assistance.

According to the groups, the administration "has provided virtually no information about immigrants newly detained at Guantánamo, including how long they will be held there, under what authority and conditions, subject to what legal processes, or whether they will have any means of communicating with their families and attorneys."

“Our country must not create a shadow system of indefinite detention, stripping noncitizens of their legal protections simply by transferring them offshore."

After pictures emerged last week of the first batch of prisoners shipped to the island and a large tent city that has been erected at Gitmo since President Donald Trump took office less than four weeks ago, fears over what the administration has in store for the facility have only grown.

On Sunday, a federal judge blocked the transfer of three men, currently held in New Mexico, to the island prison complex, but that order only pertained to those specific individuals. The individuals already transferred to Gitmo have yet to be identified by the administration, according to the right groups, or given access to outside legal assistance.

"By hurrying immigrants off to a remote island cut off from lawyers, family, and the rest of the world, the Trump administration is sending its clearest signal yet that the rule of law means nothing to it. It will now be up to the courts to ensure that immigrants cannot be warehoused on offshore islands," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a Wednesday statement announcing the lawsuit.

Deepa Alagesan, senior supervising attorney at IRAP, said, "Secretly transferring people from the United States to Guantánamo without access to legal representation or the outside world is not only illegal, it is a moral crisis for this nation."

In an interview with the New York Times published Tuesday, Yajaira Castillo, who lives in Colombia, said she only realized her brother, Luis Alberto Castillo of Venezuela, was among those detained at Gitmo because she spotted him in photos posted on social media by Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, who visited the island Friday.

"My brother is not a criminal," said Castillo. “This is all discrimination and xenophobia, just because he's Venezuelan.”

Eucaris Carolina Gomez Lugo, a plaintiff in the suit filed Wednesday, has a similar story: she only discovered her brother was in detention after photos of him in shackles were spotted.

While the administration has claimed those migrants sent to Gitmo are the "worst of the worst," they have presented no evidence to back up these claims, and the relatives of those who have come forward, like Castillo, say they are completely fraudulent. Castillo shared details and documentation about her brother's asylum claim efforts with the Times.

"Detaining immigrants at Guantánamo Bay without access to legal counsel or basic due process protections is a grave violation of their rights and an alarming abuse of government power," said Rebecca Lightsey, co-executive director of American Gateways. "Our country must not create a shadow system of indefinite detention, stripping noncitizens of their legal protections simply by transferring them offshore."