D.D.C. Hears Agency Witness Testimony on Guantanamo Immigration Detention; Government's Filed Authority Is the Removal Statute and the Secretary's General Power

The court hearing that Minnesota coverage of the Somali Guantanamo detainees pointed to as set for October 14 was held in Luna Gutierrez v. Mullin (formerly v. Noem), No. 1:25-cv-01766-SLS, a class action before D.D.C. Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, not in the access-to-counsel case Suazo-Muller v. Noem (docketed as Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center v. Noem), No. 1:25-cv-00418-CJN, before Judge Carl J. Nichols. A joint status report dated October 19, 2026 refers to the October 14, 2026 witness testimony and proposes simultaneous supplemental briefs of ten pages, due October 26, 2026. Neither case is a petition filed for a Somali detainee. The “habeas” label traces to the CourtListener cause code and to counsel’s caption.

The authority the government states. The government’s cross-motion memorandum puts its position as: the “custodial authority under § 1231 does not end until the execution of a final order of removal is complete.” It adds that it holds “unreviewable authority” under 8 U.S.C. § 1103(a)(3) to perform “acts as he deems necessary for carrying out his authority.” The named operating instrument is a Memorandum of Understanding between the Departments of War and Homeland Security, which followed the presidential memorandum of January 29, 2025. The government’s duration figures are averages: sixteen (16) days in the joint report responding to the March 5, 2026 minute order, and 14 days in a September 2025 declaration. The plaintiffs dispute the sixteen-day figure. On the government’s own reading, a transfer to Guantanamo is not the completion of a removal, which is the opposite of an agency record that logs a removal as complete while the man is held in Cuba; no filing pulled here addresses such a record.

The court so far. In its opinion denying the motion to dismiss (December 2025), the court wrote, accepting the complaint’s allegations as true, that the policy “is not authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act,” and certified a class of immigration detainees who have been ordered removed and are or will be held at Guantanamo. That is a ruling on the pleadings, not a finding after a record. No summary-judgment decision has issued as of this entry.

Conditions. The opinion’s Camp 6 description, that detainees are “permitted only one hour per day of recreation in an indoor cage,” is the complaint’s allegation as the court recounts it, not a finding. The government reported three detained at the Migrant Operations Center and zero at Camp VI as of March 10, 2026.

Related: 2026-08-28–ice-diverts-twelve-somali-men-told-deported-somalia-to-guantanamo, 2026-09-09–adam-abdullah-st-paul-asylum-seeker-sent-to-guantanamo-camp-six, 2026-10-02–nine-somali-men-including-three-minnesotans-deported-from-guantanamo-to-somalia.