ICE Wastes $16M on Guantanamo Bay Operation as All Migrants Returned to US

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Billal Rahman is an immigration reporter based in London, U.K. He specializes in immigration policy and border security. He has uncovered allegations of misconduct among border agents under investigation and exposed claims of abuse at ICE-run detention centers in the U.S. He joined Newsweek in 2024 from The Independent. He has covered the British Post Office scandal and the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Originally from Glasgow, he studied Journalism in Edinburgh and then worked for STV News before moving to London in 2022. You can contact Billal at b.******@******ek.com.

Billal Rahman

Immigration Reporter

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The Trump administration has spent $16 million on housing migrants in Guantanamo Bay’s naval base in Cuba, according to multiple reports.

All of the migrants detained at Guantanamo Bay have been transferred to Louisiana over the past two days, according to reports by ABC News and the New York Times.

Newsweek contacted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for comment via email outside of normal office hours.

Why It Matters

In January, President Donald Trump announced plans to detain up to 30,000 immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally at Guantanamo Bay ahead of deportation as part of his hard-line crackdown.

Trump said he was signing an executive order “to instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay.”

Guantanamo Bay is widely recognized for its military prison, established after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

What to Know

As of Friday, 41 migrants were at the Guantánamo Bay base awaiting deportation, nearly evenly divided between low and high threat levels. All have since been flown to Alexandria, Louisiana, on non-military aircraft on Tuesday and Wednesday, where they are being held at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke to ABC News.

California Democrat Rep. Sara Jacobs toured the facilities on Friday as part of a bipartisan delegation from the House Armed Services Committee.

“It seems clear there’s no plan to get to 30,000 that’s workable in any way,” she said, according to the New York Times.

Jacobs told ABC News that officials at Guantanamo Bay said it cost $16 million to stand up the migrant camp, noting that each tent allegedly cost $3.1 million to construct, despite not being up to DHS standards.

U.S. officials told ABC News the tents did not comply with ICE’s requirements for migrant detention, including provisions for air-conditioning and other amenities.

ABC News reported that some of the hundreds of U.S. troops sent to Guantánamo Bay to prepare the base for housing migrants may be reassigned to assist with the southern border mission in another capacity.

Guantanamo Bay is located on the southeastern coast of Cuba. The United States has leased the land from Cuba since 1903 under an agreement that Cuba disputes. The Cuban government has long opposed the U.S. presence there, and Cuban officials have criticized Trump’s new policy.

What People Are Saying

Congresswoman Sara Jacobs said in a post on X: “I’m not surprised that ICE has transferred all immigrants from Guantanamo Bay back to stateside facilities. When I was there, it was clear that this “plan” was too costly, complicated, inefficient and cruel.”

President Donald Trump said on January 29: “We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some people are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, speaking to reporters: “It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country through gray tails or other assets, but also hardened criminals. Where are you going to put Tren de Aragua before you send them all the way back? How about a maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space.”

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement: “Sending immigrants to a remote abusive prison is not only illegal and unprecedented, but illogical given the additional cost and logistical complications. Ultimately this is about theatrics.”

What Happens Next

No flights have been scheduled to take migrants to Guantanamo Bay within the next 24 hours.