March 1, 2025, Washington — Immigrants’ rights advocates sued the Trump administration today to halt the transfer of immigrants from the United States to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba under President Trump’s recent order.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), and ACLU of the District of Columbia filed the lawsuit on behalf of noncitizens in the United States at risk of being transferred to Guantánamo.

Guantánamo is home to one of the world’s most notorious prisons, used when the U.S. government has attempted to operate in secret, without accountability.

The groups filed a lawsuit last month on behalf of detainees’ family members and legal service providers seeking access to immigrants who were transferred from the United States and held at Guantánamo. That lawsuit remains pending.

Today’s lawsuit seeks to block the transfers of 10 individuals in the United States who are at risk of being transferred to Guantánamo without any legal authority, in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution. 

“Sending immigrants to a remote abusive prison is not only illegal and unprecedented, but illogical given the additional cost and logistical complications. Ultimately this is about theatrics,” said Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

“As we know from decades of challenging indefinite detention there, Guantánamo has no purpose other than to project lawlessness, domination, and cruelty,” said Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Baher Azmy. “The courts, as they have before, must again today reject the Trump administration's latest unlawful power grab and put a stop to their plans for another island detention camp.” 
 
“Never before has the federal government moved immigrants held in the United States on civil immigration charges to Guantánamo. People are suffering under this new order and the Trump administration’s lawless actions will not go unchallenged,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Prison Project. 

“For decades, Guantánamo has been the site of grave human rights abuses perpetrated by the U.S. government,” said Kimberly Grano, staff attorney, U.S. litigation, with the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP). “The Trump administration is exploiting this sordid history to send the message that no cruelty is off limits in its assault on the rights and humanity of immigrants. This lawless project to take people from U.S. soil and detain them at this notorious offshore prison must be stopped.”

“Nothing in U.S. law authorizes ICE to detain people in foreign countries, but that appears to be of no concern to the Trump administration,” said Arthur Spitzer, senior counsel at the ACLU of the District of Columbia. “For an administration that has been touting supposed efficiency with taxpayer dollars, President Trump seems eager to waste money on unnecessary and unlawful mistreatment of immigrants.”

The complaint can be found on the Center for Constitutional Rights case page here.