Washington — Whereas the Trump administration has highlighted transfers of harmful criminals and suspected gang members to Guantanamo Bay, additionally it is sending nonviolent, “low-risk” migrant detainees who lack severe legal information or any in any respect, in response to two U.S. officers and inside authorities paperwork.
When he ordered officers to transform services contained in the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, right into a large-scale immigration detention web site late final month, President Trump stated it will home the “worst” migrants and “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.”
Administration officers have since touted army flights to Guantanamo that they stated have transported migrants within the U.S. illegally who’ve additionally dedicated violent crimes like homicide and rape, in addition to alleged members of Tren de Aragua, the notorious gang that originated in Venezuelan prisons.
Inner paperwork and interviews with U.S. officers point out the administration has despatched migrant criminals and alleged gang members to Guantanamo, detaining them within the post-9/11 maximum-security jail that additionally homes, in a separate part, greater than a dozen terrorism suspects.
Federal immigration authorities outline low-risk detainees as migrants who face deportation as a result of they’re within the U.S. illegally however who haven’t been arrested or convicted of violent offenses or different severe crimes, authorities pointers present. U.S. officers stated they might embrace migrants who lack any legal report however have been ordered deported due to civil immigration violations, like coming into the nation with out correct paperwork.
Whereas the high-risk migrants have been detained in cells at Guantanamo’s maximum-security jail, the low-risk detainees have been positioned in a barrack-like facility often called the Migrant Operations Heart that features rooms with restrooms, in response to the paperwork and one of many U.S. officers, who requested anonymity as a result of they weren’t approved to talk to the press.
The State Division has historically used the Migrant Operations Heart to deal with asylum-seekers intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard, whereas they wait to be resettled in third international locations.
“In addition to holding violent gang members and other high-threat illegal aliens, Guantanamo Bay is also holding other illegal aliens with final deportation orders. Every single alien at Guantanamo Bay has a final deportation order,” the spokesperson stated. “All of these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally.”
In two weeks, officers have made some progress in operationalizing Mr. Trump’s directions to determine the services wanted to detain as many as 30,000 unauthorized migrants on the base in Guantanamo, a 45-square mile stretch of Cuban land that the U.S. has leased for over a century.
Over the previous week, U.S. service members on the base have been erecting tents to deal with migrant detainees past the jail and Migrant Operations Heart, each of which have restricted capacities.
A photograph launched by the Pentagon exhibits tents being erected to deal with migrants at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on Feb. 6, 2025.
U.S. Navy / AFN Guantanamo Bay Public Affairs
Officers have additionally been assembly the administration’s aim of transporting teams of detainees to the bottom each day, sending eight army flights during the last 9 days. The flights, nonetheless, have solely carried as much as 15 detainees every, resulting from limits on what number of will be transported at one time once they attain the bottom.
As of late Tuesday, practically 100 unauthorized migrants had been being held at Guantanamo, all of them adults from Venezuela, one of many U.S. officers stated. Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem stated just lately the detainees will likely be held there till they are often deported, nevertheless it’s unclear when that would occur.
Lately, Venezuela’s repressive authorities has usually rejected American deportation flights, citing the financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. Below a just lately brokered settlement with the Trump administration, Venezuela despatched two planes to the Texas border earlier this week to choose practically 200 of its residents who had been in U.S. immigration custody and transport them again to Venezuela. However comparable flights to Guantanamo haven’t been introduced.
Whereas some Republican lawmakers have praised the Trump administration for utilizing Guantanamo to carry migrant detainees, the hassle has alarmed pro-immigrant civil rights teams. They’ve accused the administration of utilizing the naval base as a “legal black hole” to carry migrants “incommunicado,” demanding that the detainees be given entry to attorneys.
Whereas the transportation of low-risk migrants to Guantanamo undermines statements from Trump officers that the ability could be used to deal with “the worst of the worst,” it additionally reinforces a message the administration has communicated repeatedly: nobody who’s within the U.S. illegally will likely be shielded from detention and deportation, even when they lack legal histories.
Eleanor Watson
contributed to this report.
Extra
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
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