The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) filed a federal lawsuit Thursday under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)with the aim of compel disclosure of records on refugee interdiction and detention retained in the Migrant Operations Center (GMOC) of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cubaa place best known for being the US prison camp for terrorism suspects.
Last week, IRAP released the report, “Offshoring Human Rights: Detention of Refugees at Guantanamo Bay,” on the U.S. government’s practice of intercept refugees fleeing persecution by sea and detain them at the military naval base that operates outside US immigration lawsbased on the testimony of refugees who were previously detained there.
The IRAP report “Relocation of human rights: Detention of Refugees in Guantanamo” It is available in Spanish here.
- It is not just a detention center for terrorists, it is a detention center for migrants
- Immigrants who are not registered and are not detained
- Guantánamo was a refugee detention center long before it was a prison for terrorists
- Right to be treated like other immigrants
- Five recommendations from the IRAP report
According to the report, the Biden administration has said it has considered using the facility to mass detention of immigrants who are fleeing the security conditions in Haiti, but Many of the refugees who were and could still be detained in Guantánamo are Cubans and Haitians.
“They make you feel as if migrating were a crime,”
It is not just a detention center for terrorists, it is a detention center for migrants
The GMOC is different from the base’s famous military prison, but the United States government uses both.
To date, There is very little public information about how the facility worksand the US government denies that the refugees it intercepts and holds at the facility are actually “detained.”
The groups submitted their initial FOIA request in December 2022. The government responded by stating that the Guantanamo Bay Migrant Operations Center It was not a “detention” center. and administratively closed the request.
After the ACLU and IRAP resubmitted the request in March 2023, the government again insist that the center “It is not a detention center and none of the migrants there are detained.”
Immigrants who are not registered and are not detained
Unlike other immigrants in the United States immigration detention system, Guantánamo detainees cannot be searched in a public detainee database.
The State Department he doesn’t even consider them detained because they can agree to leave if they are deported to their countries of origin.
The government indicated that the organizations they would have to “remove all references to” the detention before complying with the FOIA request. Although the groups complied with this demand, the FOIA request remains pending.
Guantánamo was a refugee detention center long before it was a prison for terrorists
The primary mission of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is “to serve as a strategic logistics base for the Navy’s Atlantic Fleet and support counter-drug operations in the Caribbean.”
The base took on another mission in 1994: operations against migrants. In May of that year, a joint U.S. military task force launched Operation Sea Signal to rescue and intercept Haitian migrants at sea fleeing the island’s military government. as stated in “Between Despair and Hope: Cuban rafters at the US naval base at Guantánamo, 1994-1996”, the multimedia exhibition on the Cuban rafters crisis documented by the University of Miami.
The US naval base at Guantánamo Bay was selected as temporary shelter for these migrants. When the Cuban rafters crisis broke out in August, There were already 15,000 Haitians living in tents on the base. Operation Sea Signal was expanded to include Cuban rafters and Guantánamo began to prepare to house up to 60,000 Cubans.
Between August 1994 and February 1996, More than 30,000 Cubans were detained at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after trying to reach the United States on rafts and other improvised boats.
In fact, the arrests of immigrants at sea and their transfer to the US Naval Base in Guantánamo were authorized by the US government during the 1994 rafter crisis.
Today I have ordered that illegal refugees from Cuba not be allowed to enter the United States. “Refugees rescued at sea will be taken to our naval base in Guantánamo, while we explore the possibility of finding other safe havens in the region.”
On August 19, 1994, the White House announced that All Cubans intercepted at sea would be taken to the United States Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and all Cuban refugees arriving on American soil would be detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service while their cases were reviewed.
Right to be treated like other immigrants
“The government has kept its treatment of migrants at Guantánamo hidden in the shadows for too long,” said Wafa JunaidSkadden Fellow at the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. “The little we know about the conditions at the Immigration Operations Center is alarming, and we refuse to allow the government to continue to conceal its detention practices there.”
As detailed in the IRAP report, For decades the United States has detained refugees found at sea, many of them Cubans and Haitians, in Guantánamo Bay, where the United States has not applied the same detection and detention standards that apply to migrants at land borders.
Refugees provided IRAP first hand accounts about inhumane conditions, ill-treatment and the complete lack of accountability in the detention centerwhich included unsafe water and exposure to open sewage, inadequate education and health care for children, and collective punishment of detained refugees.
“It is outrageous that the US government refuses to even acknowledge the reality of the detention of refugees at Guantanamo Bay,” said Kimberly Grano.litigation lawyer at IRAP.
“We experienced firsthand the government’s lack of transparency and accountability as we tried for months to contact our clients, whom the U.S. government itself considered refugees deserving humanitarian protection. “The public deserves to know the truth about the government’s treatment of families seeking safety,” Grano assured.
The report compiles testimonies of refugees who were detained in Guantánamo and former US government officials and human rights defenders to offer a look from inside the hidden detention site.
The report appeared in a New York Times exclusive along with the findings of an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CRCL) that recommended that children not be detained at the base.
Five recommendations from the IRAP report
– The US government should close GMOC and stop using it as a long-term detention center for refugees
– The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) should provide asylum seekers at sea and on land the same due process protections historically associated with territorial asylum
– DHS should grant parole into the United States to all refugees currently incarcerated at the GMOC and offer parole to those who were imprisoned there and now reside elsewhere
– Congress and agency oversight bodies should investigate widespread human rights abuses at GMOC
– The International Organization for Migration (IOM) should stop engaging with the GMOC and end its immigration detention operations around the world.
With information from UM Libraries Digital Exhibits | Crisis & Response · Between Despair and Hope: Cuban Rafters at the US Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, 1994-1996
Keep reading:
• The US granted $686 million to Latin American countries to alleviate the migration crisis
• Immigrants detained by ICE could face unlimited confinement without bail
• Shelter operator for migrant children from Texas, Arizona and California sued for sexual abuse