The Trump administration has transported dozens of immigrants to Guantanamo and is now holding them "incommunicado" without access to attorneys, family members, or the outside world, a group of immigrants' rights advocates said in a lawsuit filed Wednesday in D.C. federal court.

Represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Refugee Assistance Project, the advocates said more than 50 immigrants who were flown to the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on military planes "have effectively disappeared into a black box" and are now prevented from accessing legal assistance.

Among the plaintiffs are family members of three Venezuelan nationals — Tilso Ramon Gomez Lugo, Yoiker David Sequera and Luis Alberto Castillo Rivera — who were transferred to Guantanamo from an immigration detention facility in Texas.

The complaint, which names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other U.S. officials as defendants, seeks court intervention to ensure that the detainees can talk with lawyers and family members. The suit also seeks information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security regarding protocols for attorney-client communication.

The ACLU said in a statement accompanying the suit that the Trump administration has provided "virtually no information" about the immigrants it has been detaining since Feb. 4 at Guantanamo Bay, a location known as a prison for terrorism suspects.

"By hurrying immigrants off to a remote island cut off from lawyers, family, and the rest of the world, the Trump administration is sending its clearest signal yet that the rule of law means nothing to it. It will now be up to the courts to ensure that immigrants cannot be warehoused on offshore islands," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in the statement.

Gomez Lugo arrived in the United States in April 2024 seeking asylum. He navigated the asylum process, which is notoriously complex, without a lawyer before receiving a final order of deportation from a judge last November. His sister, plaintiff Eucaris Carolina Gomez Lugo, has lost all contact with Gomez Lugo since Feb. 1. The sister was shocked to see photos of Gomez Lugo among the men being transferred to Guantanamo published by the U.S. government, the complaint says.

Yajaira Del Carmen Castillo Rivera also recognized her brother in a photo showing deportees on the way to Guantanamo after days of not hearing from him.

Another plaintiff, Angela Carolina Sequera, was told by another detained immigrant that her son would be transferred to Guantanamo. She hasn't heard from him since Feb. 8, according to the complaint.

Four legal providers acting as plaintiffs — Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, American Gateways, and Americans for Immigrant Justice — said in the complaint that the U.S. government's decision to hold noncitizens in isolation at Guantanamo is "no coincidence."

The location became notorious for what have been described as acts of torture at the height of the War on Terror. The Obama and Biden administrations took steps to reduce the number of people held there.

"It is appalling but not surprising that the Trump administration is exploiting and expanding the 21st century's greatest symbol of lawlessness and torture: Guantanamo," said Baher Azmy, the legal director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has challenged detention at Guantanamo since the 1990s.

In a Jan. 29 executive order, President Donald Trump directed the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to make plans to expand the detention of migrants at Guantanamo to full capacity "to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens" unlawfully present in the country.

Last week, the administration said it had transported the first 10 detainees to the facility, claiming that all of them were members of the criminal organization "Tren de Aragua."

The administration said it plans to send thousands of immigrants arrested in the mainland U.S. there, as part of a broader plan to arrest, detain and deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, a focal point of Trump's presidential platform.

In Wednesday's complaint, the plaintiffs urge the court to intervene, expressing concerns that scores of immigrants would be left without access to counsel or any means of vindicating their rights.

Jennifer Babaie, director of advocacy and legal services at Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the Trump administration is intentionally moving immigrants to an offshore site that is difficult to access "for no reason other than political theater."

"Many of these men have already been subjected to countless human rights abuses and due process violations," Babaie said. "Keeping them in Guantanamo without regular access to lawyers and loved ones while at the same time spreading unfounded accusations against them all on the basis of what they look like and where they come from, is dangerous, violent, and completely unacceptable."

--Editing by Jay Jackson Jr.