Trump Administration Sends a New Group of Migrants to Guantánamo Bay

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, in keeping with officers with information of the operation.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement charter flight from El Paso transported about 20 individuals, stated 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 briefly held there back to the United States. That switch occurred a number of days earlier than a courtroom listening to in a pair of lawsuits difficult the legality of President Trump’s policy of holding immigration detainees there.

At the listening to, Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia declined to challenge 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 Department of Homeland Security 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 supplied proof to help these suspicions, and most of the migrants whose identities have become public didn’t have prison data within the United States.

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 the websites, referred to as Camp 6, is a army jail that was constructed 20 years in the past to accommodate suspected members of Al Qaeda. The different 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. Nine hundred of them are members of the U.S. army, and 100 are civilian staff, together with 70 contractors from the Department of Homeland Security.

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. Many of them had been transferred with out particular person immigration hearings after Mr. Trump claimed he had the facility to take action beneath a wartime legislation known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

A decide has briefly ordered the administration to not deport migrants beneath that legislation, and the Trump administration is interesting that order.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.