Somali Migrant With Legal Right to Live in US Sent to Guantánamo

Por Chris Walker — Truthout

Adam Abdullah of St. Paul, Minnesota, is a legal resident with no criminal background.

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Federal immigration authorities have sent a resident of St. Paul, Minnesota, to Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, despite the man having no criminal record and being a legal resident of the U.S.

Adam Abdullah, 31, is an auto mechanic who was born in Somalia and came to the U.S. seeking asylum in 2023. He has regularly checked in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since he began living in Minnesota, and has no criminal history.

ICE officials stopped Abdullah’s vehicle on December 12, 2025, as part of the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge.” In a brief interview with Minnesota Public Radio this week, Abdullah said that the agents were not forthcoming about why he was being pulled over, and seemed uninterested in respecting his rights.

“When they come to me, and I ask them why you pulled me over, they say, ‘We are immigration, so give me your work permit,’” Abdullah recounted. “And I asked them, ‘Do you have a warrant, and what’s the reason to pull me over?’ And they say, ‘We don’t need a warrant; we are immigration, and we know you are Adam Abdullah.’”

Abdullah indicated that he still hasn’t been given an explanation for why he was targeted. After being detained, he spent the next nine months moving between immigrant jails across the country — first in Albert Lea, Minnesota, then in Covington, Kentucky, and finally in Louisiana.

At that point, he was told that he was going to be deported to Somalia. But that plan was apparently changed, and he was instead sent to Guantánamo, the U.S. naval base notorious for guards torturing imprisoned people, particularly during the so-called “war on terror.”

During his interview, which lasted only 10 minutes due to restrictions at Guantánamo, Abdullah indicated to MPR that he is one of eight Somali migrants imprisoned at the naval base, some of whom, like himself, were abducted by immigration agents in the Twin Cities.

It appears that Abdullah’s civil rights are being violated, as he doesn’t have regular access to counsel, and is limited to 10-minute phone conversations when he is allowed to speak to his lawyer.

“Calls are limited to five to 10 minutes, and we don’t even know if they’re confidential,” said Marc Prokosch, Abdullah’s attorney. “And that’s the only way that we can communicate with our clients is through these phone calls that may or may not be under attorney-client confidentiality.”

The choice to send migrants to Guantánamo, as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, appears to be aimed at further criminalizing immigration, Yumna Rizvi with the Center for Victims of Torture explained.

“This administration wants to conflate this threat of immigration with terrorism,” Rizvi said.

Conditions at Guantánamo Bay are horrendous, reports have indicated. In August 2025, Human Rights Watch interviewed 20 Venezuelan migrants who were sent there. Those individuals described unsanitary conditions, being denied access to information about their futures and their legal cases, and isolated confinement for up to 23 hours each day. Even for the one hour a day that they were released, they were forbidden from talking to each other.

“The US government has taken immigrants to Guantánamo and subjected them to incommunicado detention in appalling conditions,” Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, said last year. “No immigrant or asylum seeker who leaves their country in search of protection should be taken to a place like this.”

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Chris Walker is a news writer at Truthout, based in Madison, Wisconsin. Focusing on both national and local topics since the early 2000s, he has produced thousands of articles analyzing the issues of the day and their impact on people. He can be found on most social media platforms under the handle @thatchriswalker.

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Fonte: Truthout