SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — U.S. immigration and military authorities disclosed Monday that immigrants from 27 countries were being held at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, while revealing new details of conditions of confinement and defending the government’s authority to transfer and hold immigrants at the military base.
Court filings on behalf of the Homeland Security and Defense departments indicated that 40 immigrants with final deportation orders were being held at Guantanamo Bay as of Friday — with 23 labelled “high risk” and held individually in cells. The remainder were held in another area of special housing for migrants, in groups of up to six.
Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration this month to prevent it from transferring 10 migrants detained in the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay and filed statements from men held there who said they were mistreated in conditions that of one of them called “a living hell.”
Responding to the lawsuit, Justice Department attorneys argued Monday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has broad authority to hold immigrants with final removal orders at Guantanamo Bay “for only so long as their removal remains significantly likely to occur in the reasonably foreseeable future.”
U.S. immigration and military authorities “do not need to show that (Naval Station Guantanamo Bay) is essential to that plan, logistically uncomplicated, or that it is the least expensive option,” the Trump administration argued in the court filings.
Administration attorneys also said, “the government does not dispute that the mass removal efforts are intended in part to deter illegal migration.”
New written testimonials from ICE and military leaders say that Guantanamo Bay detainees are being “treated with dignity and and respect,” describing access to legal counsel, regular meals, laundry service and medical care as ”not inconsistent with other ICE detention facilities.”
At the same time, the government testimonials also acknowledge the naval base is not accommodating requests for in-person visits by legal counsel, while some detainees refused to eat and some have been placed in hand and leg restraints after threatening to harm themselves. Strip searches are conducted upon arrival for “high-risk” detainees, with “pat downs” searches when immigrants leave certain holding areas.
Personal phone calls of up to five minutes each day are being allowed, with conversations monitored by ICE, authorities said.
Trump has said he will send the worst criminal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, but civil rights attorneys say many detainees transferred to there don’t have a serious criminal record or any criminal record.
Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney in the case for immigrants aiming to block transfers to Guantanamo, said the ACLU does not have a full list of immigrants detained at the base or their countries of origin. He declined to comment further ahead of a court hearing in the case.
The 10 men involved in the lawsuit came to the U.S. in 2023 or 2024, seven from from Venezuela, and the others from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Trump in January said he wanted to expand immigrant detention facilities at Guantanamo to hold as many as 30,000 people, and his administration on Feb. 4 began flying immigrants there.
Initially nearly 200 Venezuelans immigrants were transferred to Guantanamo — and later flown to their home country. No Venezuelans were detained at Guantanamo, as of Friday.
While the U.S. naval base in Cuba is best known for the suspects brought in after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it has a small, separate facility used for decades to hold migrants.
Tent facilities with the capacity to hold 520 immigrants have been installed but are not yet in use. Migrants also are being held in a medium-security facility modeled after U.S. prisons.
The migrant detention center operates separately from the military’s detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under President George W. Bush during what that administration called its “war on terror.”
