First group of migrant detainees to be sent to Guantanamo Bay under Trump plan

Washington — The U.S. government is moving quickly to implement President Trump’s order to turn facilities at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base into a large-scale immigration detention center, with plans to transport the first group of migrant detainees there on Tuesday, two U.S. officials told CBS News.

Last week, Mr. Trump instructed his administration to dramatically expand detention space inside the naval base to detain as many as 30,000 “high-priority” unauthorized immigrants with criminal records. Since then, officials from across the government, including the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security, have scrambled to implement the president’s directive.

One of the U.S. officials said those sent to the naval base would be unauthorized immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the agency at the center of the president’s vow to oversee the largest deportation effort in American history. The agency has ramped up immigration operations across the country under Mr. Trump, averaging between 800 and 1,000 daily arrests in the past week — up from the 312 average in former President Joe Biden’s final year in office.

Over the past several days, there has been an internal debate about whether the Pentagon or DHS would have legal and physical custody over the migrant detainees, and what sort of legal rights they would have. 

For decades, the Guantanamo base has included a facility, known as the Migrant Operations Center, where U.S. immigration officials have screened some asylum-seekers intercepted at sea. That area is separate from Guantanamo Bay’s detention center, the post-9/11 military prison where the U.S. still holds more than a dozen terrorism suspects.

A relatively small number of migrants are housed in barrack-like facilities while they undergo interviews with asylum officers. Asylum-seekers who passed those initial interviews have been referred for resettlement in third countries like Australia and Canada. The U.S. has long had a policy of not allowing those caught at sea to seek asylum in the U.S. in order to deter maritime migration.

After Mr. Trump’s recent directive, U.S. officials have been setting up tent facilities to hold migrants in Guantanamo Bay beyond the Migrant Operations Center.

In the early 1990s, the Clinton administration held thousands of Haitian migrants inside the Guantanamo base, including in a notorious camp for those diagnosed with HIV, who were banned from entering the U.S. at the time.

While visiting the southwest border on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Guantanamo Bay “the perfect place” to hold migrants and suggested using the maximum security prison to hold members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“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,” Hegseth said, referring to military aircraft used to transport personnel. “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.”

Camilo Montoya-Galvez

Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.