In a significant legal development on Friday, a federal judge dismissed the Trump administration’s attempt to quash a class action lawsuit brought by immigrants contesting their detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This legal challenge has added another layer of complexity to the already contentious debate over immigration policies.

The controversy began on January 29 when then-President Donald Trump issued a directive aimed at expanding the Migrant Operations Center at the Guantanamo Bay naval base. This memorandum instructed federal agencies to increase the center’s capacity and create additional detention facilities specifically for high-priority criminal aliens illegally residing in the United States.

Shortly thereafter, by February 4, the first group of immigrant detainees was relocated from Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to the Guantanamo Bay facility, marking a dramatic shift in the handling of immigration detainees.

In response to these actions, a group of immigrants, spearheaded by Yamil Luna Gutierrez, filed a detailed 22-page class action lawsuit in June. The lawsuit contends that the unprecedented use of Guantanamo Bay as a detention site lacks legal authority under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA). Furthermore, it seeks a writ of habeas corpus, challenging the legality of their detention.

The plaintiffs argue that the administration failed to provide a justified rationale for detaining immigrants at Guantanamo, especially given the “ample detention capacity” already available within the United States. They assert that none of the government’s stated reasons for this measure withstand scrutiny.

Moreover, none of the government’s reasons for holding immigrants at Guantanamo held up to scrutiny, the lawsuit argued.

“In attempting to justify the transfers, the government has claimed that the individuals it is sending to Guantánamo are members of gangs and dangerous criminals—the ‘worst of the worst,’” the lawsuit reads. “That characterization has been proven wrong. Regardless, it is legally irrelevant because the government lacks statutory authority.”

In turn, the U.S. Department of Justice, in a 40-page motion to dismiss, argued the claims in the lawsuit cannot even be considered since the court lacks jurisdiction and the plaintiffs failed to state a claim.

Now, U.S. District Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a Joe Biden appointee, has rejected the government’s efforts to toss the lawsuit in a 57-page memorandum opinion which harshly takes stock of the DOJ’s arguments and the new detention regime, calling the base itself “synonymous with pervasive mistreatment and indefinite detention.”

In ruling against the government, the court preliminarily accepted several of the plaintiffs’ legal arguments.

“[T]he challenged policy of holding detainees subject to removal orders at Guantanamo is not authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),” the opinion reads. “[I]mmigration detention at Guantanamo is for the purposes of retaliation and deterrence, meaning that the Defendants’ policy is also impermissibly punitive in violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”

In the bid for dismissal, the government argued a section of the INA stripped courts of jurisdiction to hear challenges over decisions about “appropriate places of detention for aliens detained pending removal or a decision on removal.” The judge nixed that reading – saying her decision was in line with precedent dating back nearly 20 years.

Finding the claims justiciable, Sooknanan took the DOJ to task.

From the opinion, at length:

What does our immigration system get out of housing removed individuals abroad?

And all of this is consistent with the Executive’s longstanding approach to immigration-detention locations. As counsel for the Defendants acknowledged at the motions hearing, before the Guantanamo-detention policy at issue here, the United States had never run a detention facility outside of the United States for individuals subject to removal orders. Yet now, the Defendants assert that the INA grants the Executive essentially boundless authority to arrange for detention facilities anywhere outside the United States. The unprecedented nature of this claim of authority is another clue that the Defendants’ reading of the statutory scheme is wrong.

In sum, using Guantanamo as a detention center for run-of-the-mill immigrant detention – in light of other, less punitive alternatives – amounts to a due process violation, according to the court.

The opinion also took stock of the monetary cost.

“In executing this new policy, the Defendants held approximately 500 immigrants at Guantanamo between February and June 2025 at a reported cost of about $100,000 per day per detainee—over 600 times the average cost of detention elsewhere,” Sooknanan goes on. “And immigration detention at Guantanamo is ongoing.”

To hear the judge tell it, the Trump administration’s interpretation of the INA is not only “wrong” but poorly argued in court – returning to the underlying allegations from the lawsuit.

Again, the opinion, at length:

[T]he Court finds notable that the Defendants have not yet proffered in this litigation any justification for that policy. The Complaint alleges that the government has previously stated that immigration detainees sent to Guantanamo are “the worst of the worst” and “‘high-threat’ criminals.” But the Complaint further alleges that this explanation has been belied by the reality that detainees held there are in fact “‘low-risk,’ with no criminal record other than an immigration violation.” And the alleged statements discussed above, when interpreted in the Plaintiffs’ favor, indicate that a claimed purpose based on detainees’ prior criminal convictions is pretextual.