Trump’s Plan to Toss Migrants in Guantánamo Bay Takes Another Embarrassing Turn
EMPTY HANDED, “This will make great TV”.
Even a Fox News reporter conceded the whole project now looks like “an expensive photo op.”
All the migrants being held by the Trump administration at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba have been moved to the United States, officials told multiple news outlets Wednesday.
It marks a major about-face for President Donald Trump, who announced in late January that he was instructing the departments of Defense and Homeland Security (DHS) to prepare the facility to host up to 30,000 migrants as part of his hardline plan to oversee the most deportations in U.S. history.
Officials told the New York Times that the 40 men who remained in detention at the facility were flown to Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities in Louisiana on Tuesday.
Sources told Voice of America that the men—23 deemed a “high-threat”—were flown to the U.S. on nonmilitary aircraft under the direction of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The “high-threat” individuals were kept in the base’s military detention facility, while the 17 others were held at the so-called Migrant Operations Center.
Air, was less costly than the 17 military flights the Trump administration had previously used to transport migrants to and from Guantánamo.
The government has not made any official announcements about its decision to remove the migrants from Guantánamo, and the rationale behind its decision remains unclear.
The flight marked the second clearing of the newly prepared migrant detention facility at Guantánamo in a matter of weeks: last month, the administration cleared out 177 Venezuelans who were being held there by repatriating them to their home government. (The Times reported that another group of 48 migrants were also sent to Louisiana two weeks ago).
An official told ABC News that the number of migrants sent to be temporarily held at the Cuban naval base never topped more than the low hundreds, a far cry from Trump’s initial ambitions.
Officials also confirmed to the broadcaster that the 195 tents, capable of housing 500 migrants, that were set up as part of the Migrant Operations Center did not meet ICE standards, lacking air conditioning and some amenities.
The Pentagon and DHS, ABC News reported, are in discussions about whether to continue using the base.
Jennifer Griffin, the chief national security correspondent for Fox News, wrote in a social media post that, with Guantánamo emptied of migrants, the Trump administration’s effort to transform the facility “appears at best to have been an expensive photo op.”
GITMO detention plans hit another bump. The Administration’s decision to take migrants to Gitmo appears at best to have been an expensive photo op. Now Fox News has learned all the migrants held at Gitmo have been sent back to the U.S. and plans to send more to the U.S. Naval Station have been put on hold. Read the thread from
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Liz Friden
@Liz_Friden
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All 40 migrants held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been sent back to the United States and are now being held in Louisiana, according to two U.S. defense officials. There are currently no migrants being held at Gitmo, and no flights scheduled to arrive with more migrants.
After Trump first announced his plans in January, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said the Guantánamo facilities would house “the worst of the worst” while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called it the “the perfect place” to help carry out the administration’s deportation plans.
The Trump administration is set to face multiple legal challenges to its use of Guantánamo, which is best known for its alleged use as a torture site during the War on Terror, leading the UN to call it “a stain on the U.S. Government’s commitment to the rule of law.”
A D.C. federal court is scheduled to hear arguments on Friday in a case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union over the lack of legal access to migrants at the base. It will also hear arguments in a separate ACLU case that is asking the court to block the transfer of 10 migrants held in the US to Guantánamo.
