Guantánamo a ghost town despite Trump's vow to send 30K migrants: report
President Donald Trump was in office for less than two weeks when he had the idea to send 30,000 migrants to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the U.S. housed alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others deemed too dangerous to release, recalled NPR in January.
Three months later, Trump is still 29,968 people away from his goal.
"We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back," Trump claimed at the time.
New York Times reporter Peter Baker posted the top statistics on X from a report that showed just 32 migrants are being held at Gitmo.
The actual number of migrants is so low that there are 22 personal guards per detainee, with 725 total guards to handle the 32 migrants.
Reporter Carol Rosenberg included four satellite images from Planet Labs focused on the prison in 2023 and compared them to this year.
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The Feb. 4, 2025, satellite image showed a "buildup of tent infrastructure." By April 1, there were 154 migrant housing tents and 105 military support tents erected. Just 20 days later, however, many tents were removed, unused. There were just three small areas of tents left.
"No migrants were ever held in the tents, and no migrant surge has ever occurred. On Monday, the operation was housing just 32 migrants, in buildings that were established years ago," the report said.
If necessary, the military said it can "pivot and expand" to accommodate more people. However, "the Defense and Homeland Security Departments do not currently plan to house tens of thousands of migrants on the base, as the president envisioned," the report said.
The Times recalled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's visit in February, where he surveyed a task force of 1,000 military and ICE guards. That force has since been reduced.
"Since then, the Defense Department has estimated that it spent about $40 million on the first month of the detention operation, including $3 million on the tents that were never used," the report said.