The military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has consistently served as a troubling aspect of the American judicial system. Various administrations have attempted, yet failed, to shut down the establishment, which was inaugurated in 2002 and once housed nearly eight hundred terrorism suspects, often referred to as “the worst of the worst” due to their alleged connections to the 9/11 attacks. Many of these individuals spent over a decade there without facing official charges or undergoing a trial. With only fifteen remaining, the facility faced a new setback earlier this month when Donald Trump contributed to Guantánamo’s somber legacy.
Over several days starting on February 4th, the government transported one hundred seventy-eight Venezuelan migrants apprehended on U.S. soil to the prison. Held incommunicado, a hundred twenty-seven were placed in Camp 6, a section previously designated for alleged Al Qaeda fighters. On February 12th, four legal organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit on behalf of three of these Venezuelan migrants. The emergency motion highlighted, “Surprisingly, these detainees now have less access to legal representation than military detainees at Guantánamo who have been held under wartime laws since September 11.” Just days later, before a judge could rule, the Trump Administration declared that it had deported nearly all of the Venezuelans to an airbase in Honduras, from where they would be sent back to Venezuela.
This incident encapsulated the elements of the evolving political landscape. Migrants were demonized and treated as a fundamental threat to the nation. There was a complete absence of transparency or accountability. In the midst of the turmoil, it became easy to forget that the Venezuelans were being sent back to a harsh dictatorship; in 2022, Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State, remarked that deporting individuals to that country amounted to “a very real death sentence.”
Guantánamo served as an ideal backdrop for Trump’s brand of political theatrics. His agenda of “mass deportation” is based on the belief that all undocumented immigrants are criminals, suggesting any distinctions in labels—be they gang members, terrorists, or, as Kristi Noem, the Secretary of Homeland Security, described them, “dirtbags”—are merely semantic. “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump said regarding the Venezuelans sent to Guantánamo, providing no evidence to support this claim. Noem similarly asserted that they were mostly “child pedophiles” involved in “trafficking children and drugs.”
However, thanks to the efforts of journalists and lawyers, information about the detainees gradually emerged. On Thursday, the government conceded that over fifty of them had no criminal history beyond entering the country illegally. One individual was an asylum seeker who had successfully completed his initial screening but lost his case while representing himself before an immigration judge. His sister discovered his presence in Guantánamo after the Trump Administration released photos of the first group of migrants arriving there.
Nonetheless, the swiftness of their transfer from the facility should not be mistaken for a lack of strategic planning. Trump is intent on significantly increasing the military’s involvement in his immigration crackdown. Typically, deportations are managed by planes chartered by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which accommodate approximately one hundred fifty passengers. However, the Administration has begun using military aircraft, which have a smaller capacity of about eighty passengers. As highlighted by a Reuters analysis, the cost per individual for these military flights can exceed five times that of a first-class ticket on a commercial airline. Late last month, Trump signed a memorandum with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security authorizing the transfer of thirty thousand migrants to Guantánamo. This plan is ongoing, with an ICE official stating in a court filing that the base will “temporarily house aliens before they are removed,” making it “necessary to complete the ongoing removal operations.” Meanwhile, according to the Times, the Administration is preparing to detain thousands of undocumented immigrants at military facilities across the United States.
Several logistical challenges face Trump’s agenda, one of which is tied to foreign policy. Aircraft need destinations for landing, and many nations, including Venezuela, have traditionally declined to accept deportees. The government argues that Guantánamo serves as a solution to this difficulty. However, at the end of January, Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan leader, agreed to resume accepting deportation flights. Several other countries, including Panama, are now welcoming migrants from various parts of the world deported by the U.S. Given this context, relocating the detainees to Guantánamo appears more of a publicity stunt than a practical maneuver.
On his first day in office, Trump signed a series of immigration-related executive orders, framing global mass migration as a form of “invasion.” According to one order, the military is assigned a “well-established role” in combating “unlawful incursions by foreign nationals.” Another order invokes the Alien Enemies Act, a remnant of the 1798 Alien and Sedition Acts that could potentially enable the Administration to detain and expel immigrants—including those lawfully present—if they originate from nations deemed hostile to the U.S. This order classifies a Venezuelan gang named Tren de Aragua, Mexican cartels, and the Central American gang MS-13 as “foreign terrorist organizations.” During Trump’s initial term, when most migrants at the border were Central Americans, he used MS-13 to symbolize migrant crime; now, with Venezuelans being a prominent group, he shifts focus to Tren de Aragua. This gang is indeed operational, but the goal is to insinuate that any Venezuelan within the country might be affiliated with it.
The only way to counteract such tactics is to publicly address them—something the Democrats have yet to do. The President discussed the Guantánamo initiative during a press conference where he endorsed the first legislation of his second term: the Laken Riley Act, named after a Georgia nursing student murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant last year. This law requires the detention of any undocumented individuals charged with misdemeanors, such as shoplifting or petty theft, and passed with bipartisan support. Privately, Congressional Democrats and their teams claim that voters have voiced their opinions regarding immigration issues. While Trump’s pledge to execute mass deportations may have contributed to his electoral success, there is a distinction between voters endorsing a slogan and confronting the human repercussions of such policies. If Democrats choose not to turn a blind eye, perhaps the public won’t either. ♦
