A group of five Senate Democrats led by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a letter to President Trump on Monday challenging his transfer of migrants to detention centers at the U.S. Naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
They called the move “unprecedented, unlawful, and harmful to American national security, values and interests.”
The senators noted the U.S. government has never before sent anyone directly from within the country’s borders to be detained at Guantánamo, though the naval facilities were temporarily used more than 30 years ago to house migrants from Haiti and Cuba interdicted at sea.
“There is no basis in U.S. immigration law for transferring noncitizens arrested inside the United States to a location outside of the United States for detention prior to or for the purpose of conducting removal proceedings,” the senators wrote.
They argued that migrants within the United States are “entitled to numerous protections” such as the opportunity under U.S. immigration law to seek protection from removal to countries where they face persecution.
“Simply put, if the processes for obtaining a lawful removal order have not been followed, the forcible removal of a noncitizen to Guantánamo violates U.S. immigration law,” they wrote.
The letter was signed by Sens. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
It was shared with Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The Democrats argued that immigration law does not provide the federal government authority to detain migrants after they’ve been removed from the United States and that once a person with a removal order arrives in a location outside the United States, there is no basis in law to retain custody of that individual.
The senators wrote that detaining migrants at Guantánamo may block their right to access legal counsel and therefore may violate the Constitution.
“We are concerned that your administration did not consider these serious legal concerns or have any plan to address them prior to transferring noncitizens from the United States to Guantánamo,” they asserted.
The senators asked Trump to provide his administration’s “claimed legal authority” for transporting migrants to Guantánamo and the criteria for determining which ones would be sent to the detention camps.
They asked the president to “definitively state” that families and children will not be sent to the prison camp. And they asked him to say whether any individuals sent so far have been convicted of crimes and whether they were provided with legal representation during criminal proceedings.
“It also appears that your administration’s claims that it was sending ‘worst of the worst’ there are misleading. Public reporting indicates that noncitizens who [the Department of Homeland Security] deemed low risk were sent to Guantánamo,” they wrote.
