 "Representational image. File image/AFP")
Three immigrants who obtained a restraining order against the federal government to avoid transportation to Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay Naval Base were deported this week on direct flights to Venezuela, according to court records released Friday.
The three men were deported on Monday, one day after a federal court issued a temporary order preventing their deportation to Guantanamo Bay.
Venezuelan immigrants are flown daily from a military facility in El Paso, Texas, to Guantanamo as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Lawyers for the deported men said that the US government had falsely accused them of gang connection, which might put them in danger.
“The government’s baseless accusations in this case that two of the (immigrants) are affiliated with the infamous Tren de Aragua gang raises grave concerns about risks to their lives and freedom upon their return to Venezuela,” attorney Jessica Myers Vosburgh of the Center for Constitutional Rights told a federal judge.
Immigrant rights organisations have filed a second complaint requesting access to persons who have been transported to Guantanamo Bay without legal representation or connection with family.
Millions of desperate individuals have fled Venezuela under President Nicolás Maduro’s catastrophic economic and political crises, emigrating to other regions of Latin America or the United States.
More than a decade ago, the Tren de Aragua gang formed in a chaotic jail in Aragua, Venezuela’s central state.