Federal District Judge Carl J. Nichols ruled this Friday against two lawsuits filed by human rights collectives seeking to prohibit new shipments of migrants to the Guantanamo military base by the Trump Administration.
Nichols made his decision arguing that currently, there are no migrants in Guantanamo after the base was emptied of undocumented individuals days earlier. Therefore, he considered that there were no solid arguments to maintain that those held there suffered inhumane conditions or that some had attempted suicide.
These hearings coincided with the Trump Administration's decision to transfer migrants previously sent to Guantanamo to another detention center in Louisiana. The majority of Venezuelan migrants who remained at the U.S. naval base were accepted by Nicolás Maduro's government on deportation flights.
One of the rejected lawsuits was filed on behalf of ten migrants detained in the United States, seven of whom were from Venezuela. It was alleged that transferring migrants to Guantanamo was arbitrary and violated the law prohibiting such transfers or detentions.
The second lawsuit requested access to legal assistance with private communication between lawyers and detainees in Guantanamo, as well as to be informed in advance about any transfer to or from the base.
The judge stated that it had not been proven that migrants were permanently transferred to Guantanamo and mentioned that the Government had implemented measures to improve legal assistance to detainees at the base.
Trump had ordered the expansion of the detention center for migrants in Guantanamo shortly after taking office, aiming to increase its capacity to 30,000 people. It was argued that the base was designated for migrants with criminal records or linked to gangs, such as the Tren de Aragua.
Despite efforts to prevent the shipments of migrants to Guantanamo, the Government began secretly transferring them to the base in February, without revealing the identities of most detainees or the crimes they were alleged to have committed.
In February, Maduro's government received 177 Venezuelans who had previously been detained at the U.S. base.
