Human Rights Groups Demand Immediate Halt to Asylum Seeker Detentions at Guantanamo

Last updated on October 18th, 2024 at 08:38 am

Over a hundred organisations are requesting together that the U.S Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba should close its migrant processing facility and stop holding asylum seekers who are discovered at sea. 

In an open letter  written to US President Joe Biden on Wednesday by a coalition of 125 rights organisations led by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and Haitian Bridge Alliance has put forward a request.

The request in the letter stated, “We demand that your administration should close the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center and process asylum seekers encountered at sea in a manner consistent with US human rights obligations. The US government cannot continue to hide its diversion and mistreatment of asylum seekers by exiling them to Guantanamo, out of reach from their families, advocates, public consciousness and the law.”

According to a ProPublica investigation the group of 125 organisations  demanded that the US government has to stop arresting sea travelling migrants from Haiti and returning them to “war-like” conditions in the asylum. This situation was also shared by hundreds of unaccompanied children who came between 2021 and 2023.

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A September report by the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) has raised a concern towards the US on how they treat the sailing migrants, especially their arrest and imprisonment in Guantanamo.

According to the research, Guantanamo’s “prison-like conditions” for asylum seekers are not the only concern but also  there is “little to no transparency or accountability.” Former MOC employees who were mentioned in the IRAP investigation claim that detained migrants are not allowed to make any private calls and are “punished” if they report any assaults. 

They claim that traumatised youngsters do not have access to any kind of professional mental health care or education. The US State Department rejected the report’s findings and allegations telling that people at Guantanamo are not kept there like prisoners since “they can go to places like the base’s grocery store” and that the facility is “humanitarian.”