Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has met with a temporary roadblock after Federal District Court for New Mexico ruled in favor of three Venezuelan migrants. The United States is now blocked from deporting the men to the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as revealed by their lawyers. Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama, decided to throw a wrench into Trump’s plans.
The three Venezuelan men have been detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in New Mexico. Their lawyers filed for a temporary restraining order on Sunday evening, asking the court to block the United States from sending them back to Guantánamo. This is one of the very first major legal fronts against Donald Trump, who is otherwise sure of the effectiveness of his new policy for deporting undocumented immigrants.
The bad news arrived during the Super Bowl when the president was enjoying a historic moment at the NFL event. Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales of the Federal District Court for New Mexico held the hearing via video conference and shortly verbally granted the restraining order. This news has been confirmed by Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which actively represents migrants.
According to the court filing, the three migrants are currently at the Otero County Processing Center. The previous group of men who had flown out in the past few days were also reportedly held at the same ICE facility. It has been reported that the three men with restraining orders have identified a few of the previous detainees from government photos and media coverages.
The court filing revealed that the three men heard the buzz about more transfers and credibly feared that they would be next. They were already being represented by their lawyers at that time. The reason behind the worries was valid. As per the filing, they “fit the profile of those the administration has prioritized for detention in Guantánamo, i.e. Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang.”
🚨 BREAKING: Federal Judge Kenneth Gonzales (Obama 2012) Blocks Trump’s Plan to Send Venezuelan Migrants to Guantánamo Bay pic.twitter.com/DCRbxH8jvW
— Publius (@OcrazioCornPop) February 10, 2025
However, it is not clear if the Trump administration has legal authority to fly the migrants to Guantánamo and hold them under detention there. The filing, which arrived with additional lawsuits brought by the three men, argues that they can’t be held in continued detention and should be freed. In addition, it also makes a point that if they are transferred to Guantánamo Bay, they might lose communication with their current lawyers. It can later lead the government to argue that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction in the case.
Although these three men were set for removal as their asylum requests were denied, they could not have been repatriated due to the relations between the American government and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s administration.
Meanwhile, Trump has been taking significant steps to smoothen the immigration crackdown process for Venezuelan migrants. According to The New York Times, he directed the Homeland Security and Defense Departments to take measurements for more migrant operations centers at Guantánamo Bay. The military troops were sent to prepare a tent city on the side of the base to “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
