WASHINGTON – A U.S. District Court judge later Friday denied a temporary detention order request from a legal advocacy group seeking access to clients while in custody at Guantanamo Bay Navy Base in Cuba following a last-minute transfer by the Trump administration.
Guantanamo no longer has detainees, so District Judge Carl J. Nichols, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019, was rejected.
He also rejected requests in another lawsuit brought before him to ban the possibility of transfers of 10 individual detainees to Guantanamo.
“None of these 10 plaintiffs are currently not detained in Guantanamo Bay,” Nichols said of the second request.
Nichols has heard both lawsuits related to immigration detention in Guantanamo after President Trump directed his administration to prepare up to 30,000 beds to be used in detention spaces as part of his plan to deport the United States.
The first lawsuit alleges that the Trump administration denied legal access to base immigration.
The second challenged the Trump administration’s legal authority to send immigrants into the US soil and legal status to military bases abroad.
The second lawsuit also included a request to block potential transfers of 10 detainees. Nichols said he was skeptical that detainees would fit the “remarkable level” that justifies detainees being detained on the base.
I was taken to Louisiana
The American Civil Liberties Union filed both lawsuits on behalf of legal aid groups for immigrants and their families.
Within days of the hearing, the US immigration and customs enforcement agency moved all detainees from Guantanamo to the US mainland in Louisiana, including those filed by their families.
ACLU’s Lee Gerrunt, who claimed on behalf of advocacy groups, families and 10 individuals, said the federal government had cleaned up all immigrants from Guantanamo twice just before the court hearing.
Currently, there are no immigrants at the base, but there is irreparable harm as detainees are chained and struck by “the general trauma of being sent to a military base” and searched.
He argued that it is unprecedented for the administration to move detainees to military bases already in US soil.
Gelernt argued that the Trump administration is using detention “for general deterrence” in Guantanamo Bay.
He noted that he understood the extent to which the administration was made public, distributed photos and used military aircraft.
Sceptical judge
Nichols appeared skeptical that the Trump administration had allowed detention to be used as an immigration deterrent.
“They say mass removal is a deterrent and not sending people to Gitomo,” Nichols said.
Nichols also raised the issue with the family who submitted on behalf of the man who was taken to Guantanamo Bay. He said that as those detainers are back in our soil, they should be allowed to file their own lawsuits.
He further stated that the harm to the family was “already subsided” as those individuals were no longer in Guantanamo.
However, Nichols said, “There is a serious question that the government’s authority to open detention facilities extends to military bases overseas.”
Nichols also told U.S. Department of Justice attorneys that one of the 10 individuals who filed the lawsuit should be notified to the court if the government attempts to prohibit those detainees from sending them to Guantanamo.
Gelernt pressed the Department of Justice to notify them before the transfer occurred, but Nichols refrained from doing so immediately.
Nichols asked Department of Justice attorneys to determine how quickly the Department of Homeland Security can provide notice to the court, and asked them to report their responses by Wednesday.
Last month, a New Mexico judge stopped the Trump administration from moving to Guantanamo for three men detained in that state. Within 24 hours after the judge blocks the transferIce has brought three men back to Venezuela.
Last updated at 6:58pm, March 14, 2025
