U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transported 177 migrants from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras for final removal to Venezuela, according to a post on X from the agency.
Most of the migrants being housed at Guantanamo Bay were Venezuelan.
In court filings, the government contended the Guantanamo Bay operation was “meant to be a temporary stopover” on the path to repatriation. The migrants left on two flights on Thursday.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a brief video earlier in February that she visited the base and checked out the operations the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense were standing up.
“I’m down here on Guantanamo Bay, checking out some of the operations we’re standing up to house the worst of the worst, and illegal criminals from the United States of America they won’t be there for long” she said in a video on X.
“ICE intends to use [Naval Station Guantanamo Bay] as a temporary staging facility for aliens being repatriated and expects the average length of stay at the MOC to be as limited to the time necessary to effect the removal orders,” an ICE official wrote on Thursday.
There were 10 U.S. military flights that originally transported all the migrants to Guantanamo Bay, with the first carrying 10 migrants arriving on Feb. 4.
“These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities,” the Defense Department said in a statement at the time. “U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.”
And Noem added in a post on X at the time, “President @realdonaldtrump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today.”
While some of the migrants were suspected members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the charges they faced were unclear.
“Where are you going to put Tren de Aragua before you send them all the way back?” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth asked. “How about a maximum-security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space?”
Guantanamo Bay’s Migrant Operations Center was designated by President Donald Trump in a Jan. 29 executive order to house migrants without legal status living in the United States. The Migrant Operations Center, separate from the high-security prison facility that has been used to hold al Qaeda detainees, was set to be operational at “full capacity,” according to the order.
The removal of the migrants from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras follows the migrants being granted access just this Thursday to speak to their attorneys over the phone.
DHS said at the time that it was determining “feasibility and necessity” for in-person visits from the migrants’ attorneys.
“There’s a lot of space to accommodate a lot of people,” Trump said on Feb. 4. “So we’re going to use it.
“The migrants are rough, but we have some bad ones, too,” he added. “I’d like to get them out. It would be all subject to the laws of our land, and we’re looking at that to see if we can.”
It is unclear whether there will be future migrant flights to Guantanamo Bay.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez, Laura Romero and Stacey Dec contributed to this report.
The post Here’s what happened to the migrant detainees at Guantanamo Bay appeared first on ABC News.
