Attorneys Are Suing To Keep 10 Migrants Out Of Guantanamo Bay As Others Say They Were Abused There

Civil rights attorneys sued the Trump administration Saturday to prevent it from transferring 10 migrants detained in the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and filed statements from men held there who said they were mistreated there in conditions that of one of them called "a living hell."

The federal lawsuit came less than a month after the same attorneys sued for access to migrants who were already detained at the naval base in Cuba after living in the U.S. illegally. Both cases are backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and filed in Washington.

The attorneys also filed statements translated from Spanish into English from two men still held at Guantanamo Bay, four men held there in February and sent back to Venezuela, and a Venezuelan migrant sent back to Texas. The men said they were kept in small, windowless cells, with lights on around the clock, hindering sleep, and had inadequate food and medical care. One man reported attempting suicide there, and two said they knew of others' attempts. The men said migrants were verbally and physically abused by staffers.

"It was easy to lose the will to live," said Raul David Garcia, a former Guantanamo detainee sent back to Venezuela. "I had been kidnapped in Mexico before, and at least my captors there told me their names."

Another former detainee sent back to Venezuela, Jonathan Alejandro Alviares Armas, reported that fellow detainees were sometimes denied water or "tied up in a chair outside our cells for up to several hours" as punishment, including for protesting conditions.