US begins fly­ing migrants to Guan­tanamo Bay

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has begun fly­ing detained ille­gal migrants from the U.S. to Guan­tanamo Bay in Cuba, White House press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt told reporters Tues­day. 

The move comes just days after Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump announced that he would instruct the Pen­ta­gon to pre­pare the facil­i­ty to hold around 30,000 “crim­i­nal ille­gal aliens” at the U.S. mil­i­tary base.

“I can also con­firm that today the first flights from the Unit­ed States to Guan­tanamo Bay with ille­gal migrants are under­way,” Leav­itt said. 

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“And so Pres­i­dent Trump, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are already deliv­er­ing on this promise to uti­lize that capac­i­ty at Git­mo for ille­gal crim­i­nals who have bro­ken our nation’s immi­gra­tion laws and then have fur­ther com­mit­ted heinous crimes against law­ful Amer­i­can cit­i­zens here at home.”

Leav­itt said that El Sal­vador has agreed to the repa­tri­a­tion of its own cit­i­zens as well as also “ille­gal crim­i­nals from oth­er nations” who will then be sent to their pris­ons. 

“Venezuela as well has agreed to repa­tri­a­tion flights and Colom­bia also agreed to coop­er­ate with the repa­tri­a­tion of ille­gal Colom­bian nation­als that we have found in the inte­ri­or of our coun­try.”

One flight from Fort Bliss to Guan­tanamo has rough­ly a dozen migrants on board, the Pen­ta­gon con­firmed to Fox News. An addi­tion­al flight left the U.S. on Mon­day, the Wall Street Jour­nal report­ed.

The migrants will be held in the deten­tion facil­i­ty that was set up for post-Sept. 11 detainees. They will be sep­a­rat­ed from the 15 detainees already there, includ­ing the Sept. 11 plan­ners like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Around 150 Marines are at the Naval Sta­tion and have set up tents for around 1,000 migrants in the oth­er part of the Naval Base. But those facil­i­ties with latrines and show­ers are not yet ready for an onslaught of 30,000 migrants as promised by Trump and Defense Sec­re­tary Pete Hegseth. 

As of today, the facil­i­ty is under­stood to have enough beds to cater to around 144 migrants, though there is not yet enough mil­i­tary secu­ri­ty for all those beds to be filled right now. 

Home­land Secu­ri­ty Sec­re­tary Kristi Noem told Fox News’ Will Cain on the “Will Cain Show” last week that Guan­tanamo Bay is already being used to house ille­gal immi­grants, par­tic­u­lar­ly the worst of the worst.

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Noem said her depart­ment will make sure resources are placed there to ensure there is enough space to get crim­i­nal ille­gal aliens out of the U.S.

Trump last week signed a pres­i­den­tial mem­o­ran­dum last week to begin the process of mak­ing 30,000 beds avail­able at Guan­tanamo to house migrants who pose a threat to the Amer­i­can pub­lic, adding that putting them there will ensure they do not come back.

“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust their coun­tries to hold them because we don’t want them com­ing back,” Trump said. “We’re going to send them to Guan­tanamo.”

He added, “It’s a tough place to get out of.”

The pres­i­dent said the move will bring the U.S. one step clos­er to “erad­i­cat­ing the scourge” of migrant crime in com­mu­ni­ties, once and for all.

The migrant facil­i­ty at the base is sep­a­rate from the high-secu­ri­ty U.S. prison for for­eign ter­ror­ism sus­pects – which has been used occa­sion­al­ly for decades, includ­ing to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea.

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has not said how much it would cost to expand Guan­tanamo, which was estab­lished in 2002 to detain for­eign mil­i­tants in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Unit­ed States.

He also called on Con­gress to pro­vide full fund­ing for the com­plete and total restora­tion of U.S. bor­ders and finan­cial sup­port to remove record num­bers of ille­gal aliens.

Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Diaz-Canel last week called Trump’s move to send 30,000 migrants to Guan­tanamo an “act of bru­tal­i­ty.”

“In an act of bru­tal­i­ty, the new US gov­ern­ment announces the impris­on­ment at the Guan­tanamo Naval Base, locat­ed in ille­gal­ly occu­pied ter­ri­to­ry [of Cuba], of thou­sands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known pris­ons of tor­ture and ille­gal deten­tion,” he said in a trans­lat­ed post on X.

Fox News’ Jen­nifer Grif­fin and Reuters con­tributed to this report.