Kristi Noem fired a tasteless dig at migrants after a lawsuit they brought was rendered moot because most of them had already been deported.
“Suck it,” the Department of Homeland Security secretary wrote from her official X account, sharing a screengrab of a “notice of voluntary dismissal” of the lawsuit dated Thursday.
The lawsuit had been filed on March 1 by 10 immigration detainees whom the Trump administration intended to send to Cuba’s Guantánamo Bay, home to one of the world’s most notorious detention facilities.
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Since the case was filed, many of the plaintiffs have been removed from the U.S., and the remaining plaintiffs no longer wish to continue the litigation, according to Thursday’s filing.
The lawsuit, Espinoza Escalona v. Noem, argued the detainees were being deported to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay without authority or due process.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which was helping to represent the plaintiffs, said at the time the detainees were at “risk of being transferred to Guantánamo without any legal authority, in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.”
“Never before has the federal government moved noncitizens apprehended and detained in the United States on civil immigration charges to Guantánamo. Nor is there any legitimate reason to do so now,” the lawsuit reads. “The government has ample detention capacity inside the United States,” it added.
The lead plaintiff, Venezuelan man Maiker Espinoza Escalona, entered the U.S. with his partner and their baby last year and requested asylum. He was sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador at the end of March. His partner, Yorley Inciarte, was deported to their home country without their child.
The DHS accuses the couple of being involved with the Venezuelan Tren De Aragua criminal gang, but has produced no evidence to support its claims. The family deny the allegations.
Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the ACLU, told ABC News earlier this year that he has serious concerns about what he described as the “sudden allegations” from the Trump administration that led to his client’s deportation to El Salvador.
“He and others being sent to the Salvadoran prison must be given due process to test the government’s assertions,” Gelernt said.
As part of a promised immigration crackdown, the Trump administration has been deporting and arresting people on questionable pretenses and in defiance of court orders. It has declined to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador, despite a Supreme Court order calling for the administration to facilitate his return.
The Trump administration reportedly spent at least $21 million transporting migrants to Guantánamo Bay between January 20 and April 8. Trump originally pledged to send thousands of people there, but this proved problematic, and many of the hundreds of migrants who were taken there are believed to have been brought back to the U.S.
Democrats have slammed the fiasco as a political stunt and waste of money.
