By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON -The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking access to dozens of migrants flown to a U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying they were being denied the right to an attorney.
ACLU filed the complaint on behalf of families of detainees, who say the detainees themselves cannot sue because they are being held without the ability to communicate with the outside world. The suit seeks immediate phone and video access to detainees, as well as in-person visitation.
President Donald Trump, a Republican, kicked off a wide-ranging immigration crackdown after taking office on January 20, including the transfer of dozens of migrants to a detention site on Guantanamo Bay, which is best known for the separate high-security U.S. prison used for suspected foreign terrorists.
The lawsuit follows a letter sent by ACLU and other civil and immigrant rights groups to top Trump officials last week, demanding a way to speak to detainees.
“Shipping immigrants off to Guantanamo without access to lawyers or the outside world cannot be reconciled with our country’s laws or principles,” said Lee Gelernt, ACLU lawyer and lead counsel on the case. “It will now be up to the courts to reaffirm that the rule of law governs our nation.”
The lawsuit cites the cases of three Venezuelan men believed to be detained at Guantanamo.
Angela Carolina Sequera, one of the plaintiffs, said she was in almost daily contact with her son while he was in a Texas immigration detention center and last spoke to him on Saturday, the complaint stated. On Sunday, she received a call from the detention center saying her son would be sent to Guantanamo.
“Ms. Sequera has made numerous calls to try to locate her son and speak to him, to no avail,” the complaint said. “She is distraught over the lack of information, and she desires that her son be provided with the ability to communicate with legal counsel regarding his detention at Guantanamo.”
The plaintiffs also include four nonprofit legal service providers with clients in Texas and Florida, who said they are unable to represent migrants shuttled to the naval base.
The Trump administration has provided few specifics about the detainees sent to Guantanamo Bay but said the first flight carried alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said there is a system at the Guantanamo detention site for migrants to phone lawyers.She questioned the ACLU raising concerns about “highly dangerous criminal aliens including murderers and vicious gang members” rather than U.S. citizens.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who visited the base on Friday, said in a social media post that some of the detainees had allegedly been charged or convicted of homicide, robbery and other crimes.
Trump said in late January that he would order U.S. military and Homeland Security officials to prepare the Guantanamo base to house up to 30,000 migrants as he moves to ramp up arrests and deportations.
The ACLU lawsuit said the U.S. had never before moved migrants held on civil immigration charges from the U.S. to the Guantanamo Bay base and now held them “incommunicado, without access to attorneys, family, or the outside world.”
The complaint said that despite significant public concern, the Trump administration had offered no explanation of its legal authority to move the detainees.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke in San Francisco; Editing by Mary Milliken and Rod Nickel)
