Three months after President Trump ordered the base to prepare to house up to 30,000 migrants, the US military overturned a tent that was quickly set up at the air corner of a US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Immigrants are not held in tents and there has not been a surge in immigration. On Monday, the operation housed just 32 migrants in a building that was established several years ago.
A total of 497 migrants have been detained there for just days or weeks as immigrants and customs enforcement agencies use the base as a way to house a small number of detainees designated for deportation.
Instead, the Homeland Security and Defense Department reached an agreement to house thousands of ice detainees on bases on certain days. The total cost of the operation has not been disclosed.
The military says it can pivot and expand immigration operations in Guantanamo, depending on its needs. But the decision to dismantle at least some of the tents indicates that, as the president imagined, the defense and homeland security sectors are not currently planning to house tens of thousands of migrants at the base.
The tents and beds that served as the backdrop of the famous February 7 visit by Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem were invented and hidden for potential future use, according to a Pentagon official who spoke on condition of anonymity as the president's immigration mission is considered politically sensitive.
Over the weekend, the task force responsible for immigration detention in Guantanamo Bay found that 32 migrants were awaiting deportation, with about 725 staff. 100 people were employed as safety officers or contractors, mostly in a unified military and Marine.
It is the military and ice workers in uniforms of more than 22 people from each immigrant.
When Defense Secretary Pete Hegses visited in February, the Pentagon said the task force had numbered 1,000 troops and ice employees. Since then, the Department of Defense estimates it spent about $40 million in the first month of detention work.
Congressional Democrats and other critics of the operation call housing immigrants at U.S. facilities a waste of taxpayer funds and military resources.
In a letter Friday, Senator Gary Peters of Michigan and Alex Padilla of California asked Trump to order a review of the government's Efficiency Bureau's operations for fraud, waste or fraud.
“No one agrees that violent criminals should be deported, but this mission operates under suspicious legal authority, undermines legitimate procedures, is sustainedly expensive, and wastes millions of dollars of taxpayer money.”
The senator said when he visited Guantanamo in March he was told that the tents did not meet detention standards and that there were no plans to use them to retain immigrants.
Senior military leaders recently testified that the Pentagon must mobilize more than 9,000 US troops there to house 30,000 migrants in tents. Costs include military feeding and housing, and being transported there.
That ratio of one service member per three or four immigrants was intended to handle immigrants like those housed in Guantanama in the 1990s. Haitian and Cuban citizens were intercepted at sea as they tried to reach the United States.
The 1990s model treats tent camps as humanitarian rescue missions rather than law enforcement deportation operations, and states that defense officials can use them again for similar reasons.
However, the March 7 Memorandum of Understanding reached between Pentagon representatives and the Department of Homeland Security.
The current agreement defines those eligible for detention in Guantanamo as “illegal foreigners with links to cross-border criminal organizations or criminal drug activities.” The Trump administration considers them to be violent, but the explanation is based on ice profiling rather than criminal convictions.
Both sides agreed that the Department of Homeland Security will be responsible for all relocations, releases and removals. This document was first released by CBS News.
Of the 497 men who had been detained there since February 4, 178 were Venezuelans who were airlifted to Sotocano Air Force Base in Honduras and moved to Venezuelan aircraft.
On April 23, a chartered deportation flight from Texas ceased in Guantanamo, welcoming a Venezuelan citizen before delivering 174 male and female boring people to Sotocano. On the day, 42 other immigrants of unknown nationalities were being held in Guantanamo, according to people familiar with transfers that were not permitted to discuss at ICE.
Another 93 were Nicaragians who were deported by US charter flights on April 3rd, 16th and 30th.
Separately, the federal court has reviewed two military flights on March 31 and April 13, refusing a court order held in Guantanamo to assign Venezuelans to El Salvador and forbidden by deporting migrants, and prohibiting them from moving to a third country without appropriate notice to the immigrant or their lawyers.
Trina Lelmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and litigation counsel, also requires the order to give the exile the opportunity to argue that they are at risk by deportation to that third country. The issue is highlighted by the agreement between the US and Salvador governments by imprisoning Venezuelan deportees in El Salvador for a fee, but is essentially highlighted as a favor to Trump.
The Department of Justice argues that the March 31 flight was a military operation carried out by a pentagon rather than by the Department of Homeland Security, and exceeds the scope of the judge's order.
Judge Brian E. Murphy of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts ordered the government to disclose certain information about flights to lawyers advocating for legal protection for immigration.
