A federal judge on Friday rejected for now efforts to block the Trump administration from sending migrants to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, declaring that because the government had emptied the wartime prison of those detainees, the petitions were moot.
Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia expressed doubts toward those bringing challenges on behalf of the migrants, a potentially favorable sign for the administration as it seeks to use the base in President Trump’s deportation campaign.
Mr. Trump has said he wants to use Guantánamo’s 30,000 beds “to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” He issued an executive order in January to expand the Migrant Operations Center there “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.” The administration has sent two groups of migrants to Guantánamo, but it is not clear how many were considered dangerous criminals.
Days before the hearing on Friday, the Trump administration abruptly returned a group of migrants it had sent to Guantánamo to the United States, without indicating why. It was the second time federal officials had suddenly cleared the base of migrants who had been flown there. In late February, the government repatriated all but one of 178 detained migrants to Venezuela after they spent just a few weeks at the facility. One migrant was brought back to the United States.
Judge Nichols on Friday considered two challenges brought by migrants and advocacy groups on their behalf. Less than 30 minutes after the lawyers finished their arguments, he said the plaintiffs had “failed to established they are suffering irreparable harm” that warranted a temporary order to halt the administration’s policies.
Judge Nichols said that if the government sent any of the migrants in question to Guantánamo, he would be prepared to consider issuing an emergency order. Lawyers for the Trump administration said they would notify the judge if any plaintiffs were sent there, and were instructed to inform the court by Wednesday of how early in the relocation process they would do so.