On October 23, 1994, the Cuban American Bar Association, Inc., Cuban Legal Alliance, Inc., and Due Process, Inc. and several Cuban detainees being held at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay under a grant of safe haven, filed a class action complaint the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida, challenging the detainees' denial of access to attorneys. Plaintiff sought an injunction to prevent the government from denying Cuban rights organizations reasonable access to their Guantanamo Bay clients and from "encouraging or coercing, directly or indirectly, the repatriation to Cuba of, and repatriating, any [Cuban migrant] currently being detained by the United States Government."

The Haitian Refugee Center, Inc. filed a similar lawsuit on behalf of Haitians detained at Guantanamo Bay under a grant of safe haven. Both cases were assigned to District Court Judge C. Clyde Atkins.

The District Court (Judge Atkins) entered a series of preliminary injunctions, granting attorneys for Cuban and Haitian migrants access to their clients and setting limitations on other government activity. The Court also required the government to release names of all detained migrants to the humanitarian organizational plaintiffs. The government appealed and the cases were consolidated by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals.

The Court of Appeals (Judge Birch) dissolved the preliminary injunctions issued by the District Court and remanded the cases. The Court held that the Cuban and Haitian migrants that were detained in safe haven outside of the physical borders of the United States did not have any cognizable statutory or constitutional rights and that the plaintiff humanitarian organizations did not have a First Amendment right to associate with the detainees. Cuban American Bar Ass'n, Inc. v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995).

Dan Dalton - 11/13/2007


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