U.S. government claims authority to detain migrants at any military base abroad

President Donald Trump’s administration defended before a federal court its authority to send detained migrants with deportation orders to any U.S. military base in the world, not just to facilities within the country.

The statement arose during a hearing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Washington, as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which challenges the legality of immigration detentions at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.

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An unprecedented legal debate

Federal Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan directly asked whether Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem could order the relocation of detained migrants to any military base outside the country.

“I don’t see why not,” responded August E. Flentje, senior attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, making clear the Trump administration’s official stance on its extraterritorial authority.

The judge is considering whether to grant class-action status to the migrants detained at Guantánamo, which could expand the scope of the lawsuit beyond individual cases.

Background of the lawsuit

The ACLU argues that using Guantánamo to detain migrants violates their rights by keeping them in a “legal limbo” between deportation and detention on U.S. soil, where they would have greater protections.

According to the organization, this strategy is part of a deterrence policy aimed at “instilling fear, inducing self-deportation, and pressuring detainees to abandon their legal claims.”

The Trump administration contends that such detentions are based on policies established in the 1990s, when thousands of migrants intercepted at sea were temporarily housed in Guantánamo before being deported.

An issue with deep legal implications

During the hearing, the judge raised a crucial question: whether those returned from Guantánamo to detention centers in the U.S. should be legally considered “removed,” which would imply restarting their immigration process.

ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt argued that Congress never granted authority to detain migrants at foreign bases and that technical stopovers during deportation flights are not the same as holding them in military facilities outside the country.

From: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/us/politics/dhs-ice-guantanamo.html

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