Trump’s Disappearing Migrants at Guantánamo
A Venezuelan arriving at Guantánamo in February 2025, during the first arrivals of migrants at the naval base. Just over 700 migrants have been held at Guantánamo, although most have subsequently been removed. In many cases, however, their whereabouts are unknown.
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By Andy Worthington, October 17, 2025
Since its founding in January 2012, marking the 10th anniversary of the opening of the "war on terror" prison at Guantánamo Bay, the Close Guantánamo campaign has persistently called for freedom and/or justice for the men held there, struggling against indifference under Barack Obama and Joe Biden, but shut out completely under Donald Trump, who, in his first term in office, disregarded the remaining prisoners so thoroughly that, for four years, it was as though they had been entombed.
In the eight and a half baleful months since Donald Trump returned to the White House, the 15 "war on terror" prisoners still held at the prison (down from 40 in his first term) have, predictably, largely disappeared from view, made invisible as the would-be tyrannical president sprung a miserable surprise on everyone, seizing on the naval base as a venue for perforative cruelty in the "war on migrants" that he declared when he took office, promising what Human Rights First has accurately described as "an unprecedented mass deportation agenda."
On January 29, out of nowhere, Trump ordered the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security, via a "Presidential Action," to make preparations to hold up to 30,000 migrants there — plans which, fortunately, never materialized.
Beginning in February, however, the first of what, to date, have been just over 700 migrants held at Guantánamo were flown to the naval base from detention facilities on the U.S. mainland run by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), part of the Department of Homeland Security, both of which were created in 2003 as part of the domestic response to post-9/11 paranoia. No one at the time could have had any idea that one day they would get embroiled with Guantánamo, which was so clearly the territory of the military.
Some of these migrants were held in an existing Migrant Operations Center, used to hold migrants intercepted at sea since the 1990s, with others held, illegally, in Camp 6 of the "war on terror" prison, which, by law, can only be used to hold prisoners allegedly seized in connection with the 9/11 attacks, Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
Faced with legal challenges, Trump disposed of all of the first migrants held at Guantánamo — 178 Venezuelans — within weeks, sending all but one back to Venezuela. In the months that followed, however, more migrants continued to arrive, in smaller numbers, and from a variety of countries, although they too were all subsequently deported or returned to the U.S. mainland.
In June, reports emerged that Trump was once more threatening to massively increase the migrant population at Guantánamo, allegedly planning to send 9,000 men there, including 800 Europeans. I speculated at the time that the news had been an internal leak, designed to get the plans dropped via the fury of European leaders, who, as anticipated, in many cases vociferously complained in public about this flagrant affront to diplomacy.
The arrival and subsequent disappearance of migrants at Guantánamo reportedly convicted of serious crimes
In July, however, further disturbing news emerged, establishing that, at the time, 72 migrants were held, with 26 of them singled out for particular attention by the Department of Homeland Security, which published a hysterically-entitled list, describing them as the "Worst of the Worst Convicted Criminal Illegal Aliens," and giving their names, their nationalities, and the alleged crimes for which they had allegedly been convicted (no actual proof was provided). The men came from a variety of countries, mainly in Central and South America and South East Asia, although they also included individuals from the U.K. and Romania.
The decision to focus on alleged convicts had evidently arisen because the administration had been repeatedly humiliated, exposed time and again lying about most of the men it had been seizing, routinely describing them as gang members and "heinous criminals" based on nothing more than the fact that they had tattoos. In case after case, exposed by lawyers, investigators and journalists, their family members had established that their only "crime" had been to undertake perilous journeys to seek work in the promised land of the USA.
The decision to focus on alleged convicts was particularly disturbing because it coincided with the administration’s successful efforts to deport migrants not to their home countries, but to third countries (namely, South Sudan and Eswatini), with none of the guarantees required under international humanitarian law to ensure that they would not be abused, tortured, "disappeared," or even killed.
Nevertheless, despite my best efforts to promote the precarious position these 26 men at Guantánamo were in, no one at all followed up on the story, attempts to chase leads led nowhere, and the story soon sank without trace.
It was only on October 2 that Carol Rosenberg of the New York Times reported that all of the migrants held over the summer had been removed, with none remaining at all.
As Rosenberg explained, on October 1 the last 18 migrants held were removed on a charter flight to the U.S. mainland. As she stated, "Their final destinations were not known, but immigration authorities have in the past moved migrants back to the United States to consolidate deportation flights."
Further elucidating the story of the migrants held over the summer, Rosenberg explained that, at the end of July, 61 migrants were held, but that, since then, 16 ICE flights had "picked up deportees, to either return them to the United States or to add to flights already loaded with other migrants and continue on to other countries."
She added that, according to Thomas Cartwright, who tracks deportations with the immigrant rights group Witness at the Border, "Their destinations included Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, England, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Laos, Nigeria, Romania, St. Kitt, Sierra Leone and Vietnam."
Some of these deportations undoubtedly included the 26 men on the list published by the DHS, most notably the British national, although as with his arrival at Guantánamo, and his imprisonment over the summer, there has never been any mention of him in any British media outlet at all.
Once upon a time, a British national held at Guantánamo, even one allegedly convicted of paedophilia, would have been a major news story, but now it’s lost in a vortex of media indifference and the perma-chaos of Trump’s insane rule.
I can only wonder how many other troubling stories are not even being noticed at all.
More migrants arrive at Guantánamo
Unfortunately, on October 14, Rosenberg provided an update regarding the migrant situation at Guantánamo, noting that she had been told by a Defense Department official that about 20 more migrants had arrived at the naval base, although no further details — about their nationalities, for example — were provided.
Every time the naval base is emptied of migrants, I hope that the Trump administration will finally have taken note of some of the main reasons why using it is so inappropriate — the colossal costs involved, for example, or the evident illegality of using it to hold anyone detained in connection with civil immigration matters.
Every time, however, the administration’s contempt for propriety and the law wins out.
Later this month, however, a federal judge in the District Court in Washington, D.C. will finally hear a case, Luna Gutierrez v. Noem, which was submitted in June by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP).
In their submission in June, lawyers for "all immigration detainees originally apprehended and detained in the United States, and who are, or will be held at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba" argued that all these individuals "do not challenge the government’s authority to detain them on U.S. soil or to directly remove them to their home country or to another statutorily authorized country. What they challenge is the government’s unprecedented and unlawful decision to hold them in a detention facility at Guantánamo — which, under the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act], and for purposes of the application of that statute, is not the United States. Immigration detention outside the United States is straightforwardly illegal under the statute."
As the lawyers added, "Moreover, the government’s use of Guantánamo for immigration detention is arbitrary and capricious, lacks any legitimate purpose, and imposes punitive detention conditions on immigration detainees in violation of their constitutional rights."
In addition, as they stated, "Never before this administration has the federal government moved noncitizens apprehended and detained in the United States on civil immigration charges to Guantánamo, or to any other facility outside the United States, for the purpose of civil immigration detention. Nor is there any legitimate reason to do so. The government has ample detention capacity inside the United States."
It is to be hoped that, when the hearing takes place and a ruling is handed down, it will be another blow against the monstrous overreach and illegality of this particularly cruel and disdainful administration.
However, even if this is the outcome, and the ruling survives further appeals, 2025 will go down in history as the year that, in a cynically constructed policy echoing the lawless indignities of the Bush administration’s "war on terror," Donald Trump and senior officials in his administration — Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, and numerous devious legal advisers — conspired to replicate the horrors and lawlessness of the post-9/11 period not on foreign Muslims seized abroad, but on hapless migrants seized on the U.S. mainland.
And they did so not because there had been any great tragedy like 9/11, but simply because of their deep and revolting racism.
Parts of this article are adapted from passages in a recent article on my website, Photos and Report: The 33rd Monthly Close Guantánamo Vigils Across the U.S. and Around the World, covering the latest monthly global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure, which I initiated in February 2023.
