Trump administration flies all remaining Guantánamo migrants back to U.S.
The Trump administration has removed all the migrants who were still being held at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba and flown them back to the United States, a Defense Department official said Wednesday.
The 40 men have been transported to Louisiana, where there is a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Alexandria. It comes just two weeks after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent another group of 48 migrants back to the same city from Guantánamo.
It is unclear why DHS routed the group of migrants back to the United States after the costly flights to the military base on Cuba. The agency did not immediately respond to a request about the latest transfer. The defense official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing operations.
Both of the transfers back were on ICE Air, a less expensive option compared to the 17 military flights that have transported migrants to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since the Trump administration’s migrant operation began more than a month ago. A nonmilitary flight departed Guantánamo on Tuesday afternoon bound for Alexandria, according to flight trackers.
Nearly 300 migrants have been detained in Guantánamo since President Donald Trump took office and quickly ordered the U.S. government to begin holding detainees at the naval station as part of its plan to carry out the largest number of deportations in U.S. history.
On Feb. 20, the Trump administration deported a group of 177 Venezuelan men – the highest number of migrants detained in Guantánamo under the Trump administration at one time – back to their homeland. That was the first time it cleared out its migrant detainee population. During those first weeks of the Guantánamo operation, DHS sent one migrant back to El Paso.
Two Democratic members of Congress who toured Guantánamo last week said officials told them that they had asked that migrants with medical conditions and behavioral issues not be sent to Guantánamo.
As of Monday, 23 of the 40 migrants being held in Guantánamo were considered “high threat” and held in the Cuba-based naval station’s military detention facility, while 17 others were detained in a separate space known as the Migrant Operations Center, according to a Pentagon official.
The American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Constitutional Rights and other organizations have filed two separate lawsuits requesting that 13 migrants in U.S. detention be blocked from transfer to Guantánamo. A judge granted a temporary restraining order halting three of the migrants named in the first lawsuit from being sent to the naval station. The men were later deported to Venezuela.
On Friday, a D.C. federal court will hear arguments for two lawsuits by civil rights organizations against the Trump administration’s Guantánamo migrant operation: A Feb. 12 lawsuit over the lack of legal access to migrants at the base and a March 1 suit that requests to block the transfer of 10 migrants detained in the United States to Guantánamo.