President Donald Trump is planning to deport up to 9,000 migrants to Guantanamo Bay beginning Wednesday, a 1,700 percent increase from the number held in the military prison over the last few months.
The major escalation comes as the president accelerates his mass immigration crackdown and deploys both the Marines and the National Guard to Los Angeles to quell ICE protests.
Trump’s move to deport 9,000 more people will be another step in fulfilling his goal of locking up 30,000 migrants in the facility, Politico reported Tuesday.
Since February, about 500 migrants have been held at the base for short periods. Now, thousands more are being vetted for transfer.
The use of the facility costs around $100,000 per day per detainee, far more than the $165 per day in most U.S. immigration facilities. The extra 9,000 migrants would mean that the administration could cough up almost one billion dollars every day that they are there.
Guantanamo Bay is a notorious prison that’s long been linked with the abuse and torture of inmates. Many prisoners have been held there indefinitely, often without charge and trial. In January, Trump claimed that he would transform facilities inside the naval base for only “high-priority criminal aliens.”
He said at the time that 30,000 beds were being prepared to detain “the worst criminal aliens threatening America.”
“That’s a tough place to get out of,” he added.
But in March, the administration broadened the criteria in order to deport non-criminal detainees.
Those deported starting Wednesday will likely be at the facility temporarily before being deported back to their home countries. The administration’s reasoning for using Gitmo, long known as an “island outside the law,” was to free up bed space at detention facilities within the United States.
As of Jan. 29, when Trump first made the threat, the jail held only 15 inmates. Only 37 total migrants were held there between 2020 and 2023.
Critics have long raised questions about the center’s conditions: internal government reports have shown that the camp is filled with overflowing toilets and rats. Inmates are often blindfolded while being moved around the facility.
In 2023 AP News reported that the men held there are subject to “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law,” according to the first U.N. independent investigator to visit. She cited that the inmates at the time were under near constant surveillance and subject to the unjust use of restraints. Many had never been charged with a single crime.
A federal pending class-action lawsuit against the administration notes that the roughly 70 detainees currently there are facing “punitive conditions,” including insufficient food and unsanitary circumstances. The case is pending before a Trump-appointed judge, Carl Nichols.
“The government has identified no legitimate purpose that is served by holding immigrant detainees at Guantanamo, rather than at detention facilities inside the United States,” ACLU attorneys note. “Instead, defendants are using the threat of detention at Guantanamo to frighten immigrants, deter future migration, induce self-deportation, and coerce people in detention to give up claims against removal and accept deportation elsewhere.”
Of the 9,000 migrants that are being prepped for Guantanamo, around 800 are Europeans. One Austrian, 100 Romanians, and 170 Russians are being considered for the transfer.
U.S. diplomats have expressed concern over the hasty decision to send the Europeans to Guantanamo, reported Politico, especially since most European countries are U.S. allies and would typically take the migrants back without any fuss. State Department officials are urging Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leaders to change their minds.
“The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people,” one staffer told Politico. “But we’re allies.”
Trump’s plot to increase deportations comes as senior policy adviser Stephen Miller calls for as many as 3,000 arrests a day. Miller has been the architect of some of Trump’s harshest immigration policies, and he instituted a family-separation policy during Trump’s first term that split 3,000 children from their parents and was only stopped after Ivanka Trump herself told her dad to end it.
About 11 million undocumented immigrants call the country home. Since Trump took office, ICE has pushed Congress for more funding to hire additional agents and expand detention capacity.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the Trump administration for comment.
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