The Trump administration despatched a brand new group of migrants to the U.S. army base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Thursday to await deportation, claiming that they might have ties to a Venezuelan gang, based on officers with information of the operation.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight from El Paso transported about 20 individuals, mentioned the officers, who spoke on the situation of anonymity to debate the matter.
The switch put migrants on the bottom for the primary time since March 11, when the administration brought 40 men it had quickly held there back to the United States. That switch occurred a couple of days earlier than a court docket listening to in a pair of lawsuits difficult the legality of President Trump’s policy of holding immigration detainees there.
On the listening to, Decide Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court docket for the District of Columbia declined to difficulty an order barring additional transfers to the bottom and expressed doubt that the plaintiffs would succeed within the circumstances as a result of on the time no migrants remained at Guantánamo.
The administration additionally emptied the base of migrant detainees on Feb. 20, when it flew 177 Venezuelans it had introduced there to Honduras and handed them off to the Venezuelan authorities.
A spokesperson for the Division of Homeland Safety didn’t reply to a request for touch upon Thursday.
Administration officers have typically portrayed the migrants despatched to Guantánamo as harmful, accusing a few of being members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. They haven’t provided proof to help these suspicions, and most of the migrants whose identities have become public didn’t have felony data in america.
The administration has despatched scores of males, a majority of them Venezuelans, to 2 detention websites on the bottom since Jan. 29 as a part of Mr. Trump’s broader crackdown on unlawful immigration.
One of many websites, referred to as Camp 6, is a army jail that was constructed 20 years in the past to deal with suspected members of Al Qaeda. The opposite is a medium-security dormitory constructing that’s a part of a migrant operations middle.
The Trump administration has deployed about 1,000 U.S. authorities staff to the migrant operation. 9 hundred of them are members of the U.S. army, and 100 are civilian workers, together with 70 contractors from the Division of Homeland Safety.
On March 15, the Trump administration additionally flew 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador and handed them off to the Salvadoran authorities, which has positioned them in a high-security jail.
The administration has portrayed all of these males as members of Tren de Aragua. A lot of them have been transferred with out particular person immigration hearings after Mr. Trump claimed he had the facility to take action underneath a wartime legislation referred to as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
A choose has quickly ordered the administration to not deport migrants underneath that legislation, and the Trump administration is interesting that order.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
