The unraveling of Trump’s plan to detain thousands of migrants at Guantanamo

About two months after President Trump announced he would send up to 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, an expansive tent city on the naval base sits vacant. Hundreds of troops are still deployed to the base to guard the facilities and prepare them for use, even though the nearly 300 migrants who were briefly detained on the island in two separate structures are now gone.

Mired in operational and legal challenges, the president’s plan to send the “worst criminal illegal aliens” to Guantanamo Bay is unraveling. U.S. Southern Command, which is responsible for military operations at the base, has started making plans to draw down from the roughly 1,000 military personnel deployed there in the coming weeks, a defense official said. The operation has so far cost at least $16 million, according to lawmakers who recently toured the naval base.

The defense official added that the administration is planning to repurpose 195 large tents, which are each lined with about a dozen or more cots, since they have sat unused for weeks. The small groups of migrants who were flown to the island on costly military aircraft and chartered civilian planes were moved only weeks later, two U.S. officials said, adding that no more flights were currently scheduled to carry migrants to the naval base.

The Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security have struggled to come to an agreement on the division of their responsibilities on the base, people familiar with the operations say, setting the stage for finger pointing as the administration struggles to fulfill Trump’s stated vision for Guantanamo.

From the start, the plan faced a hurdle that officials have been unable to overcome. The tents were incompatible with the government’s standards for migrant detention, according to lawmakers who toured the facilities and another defense official. The tents are open to the elements, lack air conditioning, smell of mold and sit atop grass and dirt with no flooring, the lawmakers and another person familiar with the conditions said. They cost $3.1 million to get out of storage and set up, the lawmakers were told.

“They are proceeding with the orders of the president despite the fact that every single person there has to know that this is not an option,” said Rep. Jill Tokuda (D., Hawaii) who visited Guantanamo on Friday and received a briefing by officials there.

Some Republican lawmakers remained supportive of the decision to send migrants to Guantanamo.

“No matter what it’s going to take, we need to make sure that we spend it so that we get President Trump’s mission accomplished,” Rep. Mike Collins (R., Ga.) said in a video posted online after a Monday visit to the base. “Next time I go down there, I want to make sure that I see that place full of criminals.”

Officials had also said they would only be sending migrants to Guantanamo if they were in the U.S. illegally and had a criminal background. But a significant chunk of those who were detained there were deemed “low risk,” which means a judge ordered them removed from the country but they hadn’t committed crimes, according to lawmakers and legal filings.

The military now plans to use the tents to house migrants who are caught heading for the U.S. at sea, one of the defense officials said. The existing migrant center on the base, a building that can hold roughly 50 people, has been typically used for that purpose and hasn’t been at capacity in recent years. Migrants intercepted before they set foot on American soil can’t claim additional rights under the Constitution, federal law and international treaties.

Although Guantanamo is perhaps best known for the detention of terror suspects, 15 of whom remain imprisoned at the camp, the Clinton and George H.W. Bush administrations used the facility to hold Cuban and Haitian migrants who were found in international waters.

Some at DHS are still looking for ways to make use of the existing facilities—without the tents—to detain migrants who are gang members, according to a person familiar with the thinking.

A defense official said that of 277 migrants who have cycled through the base, 177 have been held in Camp 6, the detention center known for holding terrorism suspects, and 100 were detained in the existing migrant center. The administration had initially stressed that it would only be using the migrant center and supporting tents.

Lawmakers who toured the island last week said they weren’t given access to the migrant center, so they were unable to see the conditions and observe the low-threat population held there. That detention center has been under scrutiny for its harsh conditions by advocacy groups who have pushed for it to be closed.

A federal-district court judge Friday is set to hear cases brought by immigration rights advocates on the transfer of migrants to Guantanamo and access to those migrants by family members and lawyers.

In a filing last month, the Trump administration argued the use of detention space on Guantanamo Bay was “deemed necessary to complete ongoing removal operations due to the number of illegal aliens present in the United States and the current and ever-evolving availability of detention space…”

The overall $16 million price tag for the plan that lawmakers were briefed on during their visit didn’t appear to include expensive flights that carried migrants, troops and supplies to the island.

The administration opted to send the first transfers of migrants to Guantanamo Bay on expensive Air Force C-17 and C-130 aircraft. A Wall Street Journal analysis calculated that it cost more than $20,000 to transfer a single migrant to Guantanamo Bay on those planes. In mid-February, the military flights were suspended, and ICE began using less expensive civilian aircraft to send migrants to Guantanamo instead.