ICE Holding Somali Immigrants at Guantanamo Bay

In late August, ICE put 12 Somali men on a plane and told them they were being deported to Somalia, but flew them instead to the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where seven or eight remain, according to community leaders, friends and family in contact with the detainees. Detainee Sakariye Abdi Mohamed, an asylum applicant and truck driver who was held nearly a year in Louisiana after a traffic stop in Alabama, said the men are shackled at all times in frigid conditions and have held a hunger strike; several of the men had pending asylum applications and work authorization. A DHS spokesperson said the group “included some of the worst of the worst” with criminal histories and final removal orders, but declined to say which detainees were accused of crimes, and called the mistreatment allegations “false.” Mother Jones found no court records contradicting Mohamed’s statement that he has no criminal record.