Since February 4, 2025, in now daily flights, the government has reportedly transferred dozens of immigrants from the United States to Guantánamo. While their photos have been publicized—with scared young men depicted guarded by masked guards in a striking inversion of the first detainee photos out of Guantánamo in January 2002—the government has cut off any means of communication these detained immigrants might have with the outside world. Effectively they have disappeared into a black box and cannot speak with their family or attorneys, and therefore cannot effectively challenge their detention, conditions of confinement, or transfer into our out of Guantánamo.

In this case, filed on February 12, 2025, the sister of a Venezuelan national transferred to Guantánamo, acting on behalf of her brother Tilso Ramón Gomez Lugo, who was recently transferred from Texas to Guantánamo, and four nonprofit legal service organizations that provide pro bono legal services to detained immigrants are seeking an order from the court permitting them to (1) meet and confer with Mr. Gomez Lugo and the other unknown immigrant detainees held at Guantánamo in private and unmonitored attorney–client conversations, in person or via telecommunications, in order to advise them of their legal rights, (2) to provide notice prior to any transfer from Guantánamo to the custody of a foreign country, and (3) to provide notice prior to transferring any immigration detainees inside the United States to Guantánamo. Plaintiffs also are simultaneously filing a motion for a Temporary Restraining Order mandating attorney access to the immigration detainees at Guantánamo.

Plaintiffs’ claims are brought under the First and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution and, in Mr. Gomez Lugo’s case, also pursuant to the Great Writ of habeas corpus—the same type of action brought in the Center for Constitutional Rights' historic Guantánamo detainee litigation in 2002.