Category: political bigotry and intolerance

Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” said one victim. “Just like kidnapping.”

Anger is growing this week as more details emerge about the Trump administration’s detention of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, including people with no criminal records and, in at least one case, a legal US resident.

At least eight Somali men are being held at the notorious US military base in Cuba, while as many as 12 Somali deportees have passed through the facility in recent weeks, according to Sahan Journal. Seven of those still there are being held at Camp 6, which was originally opened under the George W. Bush administration during the so-called War on Terror to imprison men and at least one child in a facility rife with torture and other abuse.

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“I never expected to be arrested in a prison established for the terrorists who I fled from,” 31-year-old Hassan Abdi Abtidoon told Sahan Journal’s Mohamud Farah on Tuesday.

Among the other Somalis held at Guantánamo is 31-year-old Adam Abdullah, a St. Paul, Minnesota, resident who came to the United States as a legal asylum seeker in 2023. Abdullah had a work permit and Social Security number, operated an auto repair business, and had no criminal record, according to Minnesota court records. His past involvement with law enforcement appeared to include nothing more than two parking tickets.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested Abdullah in December during the Trump administration’s deadly Operation Metro Surge campaign, which targeted Minnesota’s large Somali community amid widespread racist demonization and dehumanization by Republicans, including President Donald Trump.

After months of detention in Minnesota, Kentucky, and Louisiana, Abdullah said officials told him he was being deported to Somalia.

“From Miami, they say, ‘OK, now we go to Somalia. Then, first we go to Cuba for refueling, and then we go to some other countries to Somalia,’” Abdullah told Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) earlier this month.

The flight never left Cuba. Abdullah was taken to Camp 6, where he has remained.

Another Somali detainee, Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, described Camp 6 as “the worst place ever I’ve been in my life.”

Mother Jones reported Wednesday that Mohamed was one of 12 Somali men forced onto a plane last month by ICE agents, who told them they were being deported to Somalia.

“Nobody tell us that we’re going to Guantánamo Bay,” Mohamed said. “Just like kidnapping.”

Seven or eight of the men reportedly remain at Guantánamo, where some of them have described being shackled and subjected to frigid temperatures. Detainees also said they are subjected to constant surveillance, including cameras inside bathrooms.

The US Department of Homeland Security claimed the flight included “some of the worst of the worst” with criminal histories including assault, weapons offenses, robbery, theft, drug charges, and drunken driving.

However, Sahan Journal reported that the attorney for six of the eight detainees had found that all had final deportation orders but no additional criminal charges. Four were recent asylum seekers, and two had lived in the United States for decades.

“The administration says we send the worst of the worst to Guantánamo,” US Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) told MPR Wednesday. “Yet in the case of Mr. Abdullah, there has been no evidence presented about what he has done, no explanation for why he has been detained. I mean, there is really has been no due process.”

The Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo for immigration detention is not unprecedented. The facility—which experts have placed within the centuries-long story of American concentration camps—has a long history as an offshore immigration detention site that predates the post-9/11 military prison camp.

During the George H.W. Bush administration, thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing political violence were intercepted at sea and taken to Guantánamo. The Clinton administration continued the policy and, at its peak in 1994, roughly 14,300 Haitians were held there. Clinton officials subsequently used Guantánamo for Cuban migrants, more than 30,000 of whom were jailed at the base.

The treatment of Somali immigrants at Guantánamo has also drawn renewed criticism regarding who has and has not been targeted for deportation from the United States.

Human rights activist Suleiman Bolaleh, who has documented atrocities committed under former US-backed Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, noted in a recent social media post that Somali immigrants with no criminal records are being rounded up and sent to Guantánamo, while members of the former dictatorship’s ruling family and senior figures have lived in the United States.

“Men once positioned at the heart of a regime accused of mass killings, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing continue to reside openly in American communities,” Bolaleh wrote. “The contrast is jarring: An immigrant [who] has no criminal record is detained at Guantánamo, while figures tied to that dictatorship’s violent apparatus remain unexamined and unaccountable.”

Multiple legal challenges to the Trump administration’s use of Guantánamo Bay for immigrant detention have been launched.

Meanwhile, the longstanding habeas litigation involving War on Terror detainees at Guantánamo continues. In May, Somali national Guled Hassan Duran—who has been held at Guantánamo since 2006 without being charged—asked a federal court to order his release after years of inaction on his habeas petition.

Duran was approved for release by senior US officials in 2021, but remains imprisoned at Guantánamo along with 14 other men—none of whom has ever been convicted of any terrorism-related crimes. Former Bush administration and US military officials have said that most of the men and boys who were ever imprisoned at Guantánamo were innocent, and that senior administration officials knew it but kept them locked up for political purposes.

Article by Brett Wilkins republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).