“One has to wonder if they’re doing it so they don’t have access to counsel, so that they can be held without rights, and so that the government can have these photo ops,” said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt.
Immigration activists and legal aid advocates have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, demanding that undocumented immigrants flown to a U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay be given access to lawyers.
According to National Public Radio, the lawsuit was filed on Wednesday. In it, attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations said that the Trump administration has already begun flying migrants to Guantanamo Bay, a U.S. military outpost in Cuba.
The complaint alleges that “this isolation is no coincidence,” suggesting that it may be an intentional effort to cut migrants off from the American legal system.
“One has to wonder if they’re doing it so they don’t have access to counsel, so that they can be held without rights, and so that the government can have these photo ops,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt told National Public Radio in an interview.
Although the lawsuit concedes that it would be “onerous” for attorneys to regularly travel to and from Guantanamo Bay, it asks that detainees at least be allowed to communicate with counsel through alternate formats, including phone calls, video conferences, and email.
Gelernt noted that terror suspects imprisoned at Guantanamo still have access to lawyers, meaning that “these immigrant detainees are now being held in a situation with less rights than even the alleged enemy combatants.”
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the federal Department of Homeland Security, said that Guantanamo Bay has “a system for phone utilization to reach lawyers,” but did not provide any further details.
“If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens including murderers & vicious gang members than they do about American citizens – they should change their name,” McLaughlin said in a statement.
However, the ACLU and its allies say that they only decided to file a lawsuit after the secretaries of defense, state, and homeland security declined to respond to a letter requesting immediate access to detained migrants.
The International Refugee Assistance Project, another organization involved in the lawsuit, said that the decision to move migrants to Guantanamo Bay is cause for alarm.
“Secretly transferring people from the United States to Guantanamo without access to legal representation or the outside world is not only illegal, it is a moral crisis for this nation,” said IRAP attorney Deepa Alagesan. “We will not stand by as the United States government tries to use Guantanamo as a legal black box to deny immigrants their basic rights to counsel and due process.”
Sources
ACLU and other advocates sue for access to migrants moved to Guantánamo Bay
Advocates ask court to give migrant detainees at Guantanamo access to lawyers
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