The Venezuelan nationals have a pending court case challenging their prolonged detention in New Mexico, their lawyers said.
A federal court on Sunday granted a request to temporarily block the possible transfer of three Venezuelan men from a detention center in New Mexico to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid the federal government’s efforts to expand the detention of illegal immigrants at the naval base.
The three men, currently held at Otero County Processing Center in New Mexico, filed a Feb. 9 motion seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent a possible transfer.
According to the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which represented the petitioners in the case, they have a pending court case challenging their prolonged detention in New Mexico.
In a memorandum of opinion obtained by The Epoch Times, the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico stated that the petitioners—Luis Eduardo Perez Parra, Leonel Jose Rivas Gonzales, and Abrahan Josue Barrios Morales—have been held in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody since late 2023. They filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in September 2024 to challenge the legality of their extended detention by ICE.
In granting the temporary restraining order, the court cited the “uncertainty surrounding jurisdiction” about their pending court case.
“At this time, the Court cannot say that without this injunction it would not be jurisdictionally deprived to preside over the original writ of habeas corpus should petitioners be transferred. Thus, an injunction is necessary to achieve the ends of justice entrusted to this Court,” it stated.
Baher Azmy, legal director at the CCR, stated on social media platform X that the order marked a “small but important win for clients otherwise bound to the latest iteration of the legal black hole.”
The men said they feared being transferred after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Jan. 29 directing the Defense and Homeland Security departments to prepare Guantanamo Bay “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
