The US government has flown 177 Venezuelan migrants from Guantánamo Bay to Honduras, from where they are set to be transferred on to their home country, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said on Thursday.
The Honduran government had earlier said that about 170 Venezuelan migrants were set to arrive in the Central American nation from the United States, before being transported “immediately” back to Venezuela.
Lawyers representing at least half a dozen of the deportees said that they learned about the deportations on Thursday afternoon.
A US Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed that 177 migrants were deported from the Guantánamo Bay detention site on Thursday. The deportees included 126 people with criminal charges or convictions, the spokesperson said, 80 of whom were allegedly affiliated with the Tren de Aragua gang. The spokesperson said 51 had no criminal record.
The move comes after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit last week seeking access to dozens of migrants flown to a US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying they were being denied the right to an attorney.
Human rights lawyers have argued that the US government has yet to provide proof that any of the detainees had committed serious crimes, while relatives of some of the men denied that they had been involved in wrongdoing.
The website Migrant Insider reported that relatives identified one detainee as Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera. The 23-year-old Venezuelan was detained when seeking asylum on the southern border on 19 January, one day before Trump took power vowing to return “millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came”. “He’s innocent,” Castillo’s sister, Yajaira Castillo, told the Spanish news agency EFE, denying her brother was part of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang.
