On Thursday, the Trump administration transferred all of the Venezuelan migrants who had previously been deported, to the Guantanamo Bay military base in Cuba, thus halting an operation that began earlier this month and was immediately the subject of harsh criticism.
Two charter flights operated by Global X, transported most of the illegal immigrants, 177 Venezuelans, to an airport in Honduras. The latter were then boarded on a plane for repatriation. In a statement filed in court Thursday morning, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said there were 178 Venezuelans who were in Guantanamo. One of these did not return to his home country, but was brought back to the U.S.
At this time, it is unclear whether the administration intended to send more migrants to the military base south of Cuba. An ICE spokesperson explained that the agency intended to use Guantanamo “as a temporary staging center for foreigners being repatriated.”
In recent days, the operation had generated several concerns. Many questioned whether the federal government had the authority to transfer illegal immigrants from ICE facilities on U.S. soil to the naval base. According to some legal experts, the Trump administration decided to vacate Guantanamo precisely to avoid the danger of having to litigate the matter in court.
The 177 Venezuelans detained in southern Cuba were then taken to Soto Cano, where the U.S. military’s Southern Command has had a presence for decades. The Honduran government said it facilitated the transfer for “humanitarian reasons.”
Initially, Trump administration officials had described the migrants brought to Guantanamo as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the State Department on Thursday placed on the list of transnational cartels and gangs the administration has designated as foreign terrorist organizations. In reality, as sources familiar with the facts explained, just being a Venezuelan illegal immigrant was enough to end up at the military base.
Until yesterday, it had been complex to repatriate the 177 individuals in Guantanamo because of the somewhat strained relations between the U.S. and Nicolás Maduro, president of Venezuela. Things began to change after a visit to the country by Richard Grenell, Trump’s adviser. Finally, yesterday, Maduro himself described the return of the “177 people we rescued” as a victory for his government and the result of a “direct petition” his administration had presented to the United States.
