Analysis
US President Donald Trump’s plan to house 30,000 undocumented migrants at Guantanamo Bay gained pace this week as the first flights arrived in Cuba. As administration officials debate the legality of the plan and others warn of human rights abuses, its very feasibility is also under question.
Issued on: 06/02/2025 -
FRANCE24
By: Khatya Chhor
A welcome board at the road to the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on April 7, 2014. © Mladen Antonov, AFP
As US President Donald Trump signed the first bill of his new term into law, he doubled down on how his administration would deal with undocumented immigrants.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said as he signed the Laken Riley Act.
While Guantanamo Bay is mostly known for having been used to detain almost 800 terror suspects in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it has a separate facility that has long been used for migrants, mainly those from Haiti and Cuba intercepted at sea.
In the wake of 9/11, “Gitmo” earned a reputation for human rights abuses, including detention without charge and torture. And the Trump announcement brought a swift response from advocacy groups.
Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement that the order “sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports”. Warren has already pledged to file a lawsuit challenging the proposal.
Trump officials have repeatedly stated that the island would be used to house “the worst of the worst”. But Trump’s own defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has also touted Guantanamo’s suitability for those awaiting deportation.
“It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country … but also hardened criminals,” Hegseth said on a visit to the southern US border on Monday.
Rights groups have long called for the facility to be closed, and until the Trump announcement they were closer than ever to seeing this realized.
Former US president Joe Biden transferred 11 detainees to Oman at the end of his term, leaving just 15 remaining at Guantanamo (including suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed).
As US President Donald Trump signed the first bill of his new term into law, he doubled down on how his administration would deal with undocumented immigrants.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said as he signed the Laken Riley Act.
While Guantanamo Bay is mostly known for having been used to detain almost 800 terror suspects in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it has a separate facility that has long been used for migrants, mainly those from Haiti and Cuba intercepted at sea.
In the wake of 9/11, “Gitmo” earned a reputation for human rights abuses, including detention without charge and torture. And the Trump announcement brought a swift response from advocacy groups.
Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement that the order “sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports”. Warren has already pledged to file a lawsuit challenging the proposal.
Trump officials have repeatedly stated that the island would be used to house “the worst of the worst”. But Trump’s own defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has also touted Guantanamo’s suitability for those awaiting deportation.
“It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country … but also hardened criminals,” Hegseth said on a visit to the southern US border on Monday.
Rights groups have long called for the facility to be closed, and until the Trump announcement they were closer than ever to seeing this realized.
Former US president Joe Biden transferred 11 detainees to Oman at the end of his term, leaving just 15 remaining at Guantanamo (including suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed).
‘Logistically impossible’
As the first flights arrived on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon were still trying to determine whether it is even legal to fly migrants to Guantanamo, CNN reported, citing US officials.
Legal and military experts have expressed skepticism about the proposal, with some saying it was simply not feasible.
Trump’s announcement on moving migrants to Guantanamo is “mostly for show, to impress his political base and perhaps to intimidate others from entering [the country] illegally”, said Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for former US president George W. Bush, in an email.
It’s a “political stunt” designed to make the Trump administration look tough on immigration, said Wells Dixon, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, calling it “performative cruelty”.
And the infrastructure that would be needed is simply not there. The administration is still speaking to private contractors about building the necessary facilities, CNN reported.
Accommodating 30,000 migrants would be “logistically impossible”, according to former Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG) Annie Morgan, a military attorney who has defended high-profile Guantanamo detainees.
The Migrant Operations Center, which is separate from both the detention camp and the US naval base, currently has 130 beds, four of which are occupied, she said. Meanwhile, the infrastructure at Guantanamo writ large is “failing”.
Vincent Chetail, director of the Global Migration Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, also cast doubt on the migrant program’s credibility, saying it appeared to be “more about political rhetoric, not a sophisticated legal strategy”.
But the threat itself might be part of the plan.
The real goal of the Guantanamo announcement is simply to “cause chaos and spread terror in immigrant communities”, Dixon said, by threatening to send undocumented migrants to a place “that is notorious around the world for torture”.
‘Staggering’ cost
A key problem is the exorbitant cost of housing detainees at Guantanamo, which administration officials have said would be overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Not only will the plans necessitate a massive expansion of the facility itself, but Guantanamo Bay is dependent on US imports arriving by air and sea – compounding the costs of construction, goods and services, and staffing.
Because the government in Havana considers the US base to be illegally located on its territory, the facility remains isolated from the Cuban economy and must pay to generate its own electricity and desalinate its water.
“If the administration wants to continue to pursue this terrible course, they will have to pour a staggering amount of new money and resources into providing flights and building housing for the new prisoners, because currently neither exist,” said Alka Pradhan, human rights counsel at Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions.
Painter also noted the exorbitant price tag. “It will be far more expensive that detaining migrants in the United States and deporting them.”
According to a New York Times tally, the total cost of detaining prisoners at Guantanamo exceeded $540 million in 2019, or about $13 million per prisoner, likely making it “the world’s most expensive detention program”.
How much it will cost to house 30,000 migrants remains to be seen, but the Niskanen political think tank estimated the price tag for taxpayers to be in the billions.
Fears of indefinite detention
While the base remains on the sovereign territory of Cuba it is leased in perpetuity to the United States and under its “exclusive jurisdiction and control”.
Guantanamo’s unusual status presents a certain “legal ambiguity as to the rights of noncitizens detained there”, Painter said.
Speaking to ABC News, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, Karen Greenberg, said the migrants already at Guantanamo suffer from mistreatment and unsanitary conditions as well as their “fuzzy legal status”.
This legal ambiguity has prompted concern that migrants could languish there indefinitely, particularly if it proves difficult to repatriate them.
The White House may be sending people to Guantanamo simply hoping they will be forgotten, Morgan said.
But while in some ways Guantanamo’s reputation as a “legal black hole” is well deserved, migrants held there should be entitled to all of the same constitutional rights they would have on the US mainland – even if they entered illegally. This was not the case with detainees flown in from, for example, Afghanistan.
“US law is clear: a migrant transferred from the United States takes with them all of the legal constitutional rights they would have in the United States,” said Dixon, who specializes in challenging unlawful detentions at Guantanamo.
Pradhan said these constitutional rights can and should be enforced by federal courts.
“The administration may think of Guantanamo as the legal black hole where they put detainees from the ‘War on Terror’, which is why they chose it,” she said. “A debate has raged for two decades over what parts of the Constitution apply at Guantanamo, for that reason. However, prisoners brought from the United States to Guantanamo undoubtedly carry with them constitutional rights, including the right of due process and the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, which includes arbitrary detention.”
But the challenges on the ground remain.
Guantanamo remains a "legal black hole in a practical sense, in that it is a remote, offshore, military installation”, and so more difficult to access for counsel, Dixon noted.
This also makes it harder for watchdogs to monitor the conditions of their confinement.
Trump seemed to acknowledge that migrants sent to the island might be there indefinitely when he announced the plan.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantanamo,” he said.
In answer to a question on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said migrants held at Guantanamo will have the same rights and access to legal counsel as they would in the United States.
"Due process will be followed," Noem said.
Asked whether it was possible that migrants could be held at Guantanamo indefinitely, as were suspects in the wake of 9/11, Noem said: “That is not the plan,” adding that they would be held in accordance with US law.
Noting that some detainees have been held at Guantanamo for more than 20 years without trial, Painter said most lawyers “believe that is morally wrong and also illegal, a violation of international law, among other things, even in the case of suspected terrorists”.
“To do or threaten to do the same, to people whose only crime was to enter the United States without authorization, is unconscionable.”
As the first flights arrived on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon were still trying to determine whether it is even legal to fly migrants to Guantanamo, CNN reported, citing US officials.
Legal and military experts have expressed skepticism about the proposal, with some saying it was simply not feasible.
Trump’s announcement on moving migrants to Guantanamo is “mostly for show, to impress his political base and perhaps to intimidate others from entering [the country] illegally”, said Richard Painter, chief ethics lawyer for former US president George W. Bush, in an email.
It’s a “political stunt” designed to make the Trump administration look tough on immigration, said Wells Dixon, senior attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, calling it “performative cruelty”.
And the infrastructure that would be needed is simply not there. The administration is still speaking to private contractors about building the necessary facilities, CNN reported.
Accommodating 30,000 migrants would be “logistically impossible”, according to former Air Force Judge Advocate (JAG) Annie Morgan, a military attorney who has defended high-profile Guantanamo detainees.
The Migrant Operations Center, which is separate from both the detention camp and the US naval base, currently has 130 beds, four of which are occupied, she said. Meanwhile, the infrastructure at Guantanamo writ large is “failing”.
Vincent Chetail, director of the Global Migration Centre at the Geneva Graduate Institute, also cast doubt on the migrant program’s credibility, saying it appeared to be “more about political rhetoric, not a sophisticated legal strategy”.
But the threat itself might be part of the plan.
The real goal of the Guantanamo announcement is simply to “cause chaos and spread terror in immigrant communities”, Dixon said, by threatening to send undocumented migrants to a place “that is notorious around the world for torture”.
‘Staggering’ cost
A key problem is the exorbitant cost of housing detainees at Guantanamo, which administration officials have said would be overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Not only will the plans necessitate a massive expansion of the facility itself, but Guantanamo Bay is dependent on US imports arriving by air and sea – compounding the costs of construction, goods and services, and staffing.
Because the government in Havana considers the US base to be illegally located on its territory, the facility remains isolated from the Cuban economy and must pay to generate its own electricity and desalinate its water.
“If the administration wants to continue to pursue this terrible course, they will have to pour a staggering amount of new money and resources into providing flights and building housing for the new prisoners, because currently neither exist,” said Alka Pradhan, human rights counsel at Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions.
Painter also noted the exorbitant price tag. “It will be far more expensive that detaining migrants in the United States and deporting them.”
According to a New York Times tally, the total cost of detaining prisoners at Guantanamo exceeded $540 million in 2019, or about $13 million per prisoner, likely making it “the world’s most expensive detention program”.
How much it will cost to house 30,000 migrants remains to be seen, but the Niskanen political think tank estimated the price tag for taxpayers to be in the billions.
Fears of indefinite detention
While the base remains on the sovereign territory of Cuba it is leased in perpetuity to the United States and under its “exclusive jurisdiction and control”.
Guantanamo’s unusual status presents a certain “legal ambiguity as to the rights of noncitizens detained there”, Painter said.
Speaking to ABC News, the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, Karen Greenberg, said the migrants already at Guantanamo suffer from mistreatment and unsanitary conditions as well as their “fuzzy legal status”.
This legal ambiguity has prompted concern that migrants could languish there indefinitely, particularly if it proves difficult to repatriate them.
The White House may be sending people to Guantanamo simply hoping they will be forgotten, Morgan said.
But while in some ways Guantanamo’s reputation as a “legal black hole” is well deserved, migrants held there should be entitled to all of the same constitutional rights they would have on the US mainland – even if they entered illegally. This was not the case with detainees flown in from, for example, Afghanistan.
“US law is clear: a migrant transferred from the United States takes with them all of the legal constitutional rights they would have in the United States,” said Dixon, who specializes in challenging unlawful detentions at Guantanamo.
Pradhan said these constitutional rights can and should be enforced by federal courts.
“The administration may think of Guantanamo as the legal black hole where they put detainees from the ‘War on Terror’, which is why they chose it,” she said. “A debate has raged for two decades over what parts of the Constitution apply at Guantanamo, for that reason. However, prisoners brought from the United States to Guantanamo undoubtedly carry with them constitutional rights, including the right of due process and the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, which includes arbitrary detention.”
But the challenges on the ground remain.
Guantanamo remains a "legal black hole in a practical sense, in that it is a remote, offshore, military installation”, and so more difficult to access for counsel, Dixon noted.
This also makes it harder for watchdogs to monitor the conditions of their confinement.
Trump seemed to acknowledge that migrants sent to the island might be there indefinitely when he announced the plan.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantanamo,” he said.
"Due process will be followed," Noem said.
Asked whether it was possible that migrants could be held at Guantanamo indefinitely, as were suspects in the wake of 9/11, Noem said: “That is not the plan,” adding that they would be held in accordance with US law.
Noting that some detainees have been held at Guantanamo for more than 20 years without trial, Painter said most lawyers “believe that is morally wrong and also illegal, a violation of international law, among other things, even in the case of suspected terrorists”.
“To do or threaten to do the same, to people whose only crime was to enter the United States without authorization, is unconscionable.”
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