The United States government has sent more than 100 Venezuelans to a US naval base with a history of human rights abuses in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
According to reports, the transfers began earlier this month as part of the Donald Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem claimed that the detainees are “the worst of the worst,” though authorities have not disclosed the identities of the arrested migrants nor the charges they face.
However, according to government documents reviewed by CBS News, so-called “low-risk” migrant detainees are also being sent to Guantánamo. Latest figures put the total number of captives at 126, with daily military flights transporting them over the past eight days.
In social media posts and interviews, Noem went on to accuse the men of being pedophiles, drug traffickers or violent gang members but did not provide any proof. The White House has singled out Tren de Aragua, a criminal outfit originating from Venezuela, as a threat, designating it as a foreign terrorist organization.
Critics have argued that the discourse attempting to conflate all Venezuelan aliens with the Tren de Aragua aims to criminalize migrants. It is presently unclear if non-Venezuelan migrants are being held in Guantánamo as well. So-called “high-risk” migrant detainees, including alleged members of Tren de Aragua, are being held in the maximum-security prison built following 9-11 to hold terrorism suspects.
Officials told media that those transferred to the military base have final deportation orders. However, they did not back the claim that all had entered the US illegally.
The New York Times revealed the names of 53 Venezuelan nationals who are currently being held in Camp 6, a prison facility inside the compound. Though the migrants are legally under the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), they are reportedly being watched over by military guards. Other migrant detainees are being held in a separate, barrack-like facility speedily built following Trump’s order to expand migrant detention in Guantánamo.
The US government’s non-disclosure of migrants’ identities has left relatives unable to locate them as well as hampered defense efforts. On Wednesday, several legal aid groups launched a lawsuit against the Trump administration, requesting that the detainees have access to legal counsel and eventually be allowed to challenge their detentions.
American Civil Liberties Union immigrant rights lawyer Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the case, said that it is unprecedented for the US government to send people from US territory to an overseas camp. “All of this potentially raises legal issues we’ve never seen before,” he affirmed.
Although the naval base in Guantánamo has been used since the early 1990s to hold migrants, mainly people from the Caribbean caught at sea, reporting by Drop Site News revealed the previous Biden administration had signed a $163.4 million contract in 2024 to run the Guantánamo facility, known as the Migrant Operations Center, as part of an expansion of capacity for detentions.
Spanish news agency EFE contacted relatives of three of the Venezuelan migrants who revealed that they found out about the Guantánamo Bay transfer via social media or from fellow inmates.
The relatives claimed that the detainees had traveled to the US in search of better living conditions to provide for their families and had no association with illegal activities, even showing evidence that they had no criminal priors.
Two of the Venezuelans were imprisoned after appointments with border migration authorities. Luis Alberto Castillo, one of those in Camp 6, reportedly told his wife that he was profiled as a gang member because of his tattoos.
In late January, the administration ordered the Defense and Homeland Security Departments to prepare conditions in Guantánamo to host 30,000 people described as “high-priority criminal aliens.” The Migrant Operations Center is not presently equipped to hold such a high number of migrant detainees.
The US military territory in Cuba was at the center of wide-reaching human rights violations during Washington’s “War on Terror,” including cases of torture and denial of protection under the Geneva Conventions. Hundreds spent years in detention without trial. Likewise, human rights organizations have sharply criticized conditions at the Migrant Operations Center.
“The numbers that Trump is speaking about now would mean mass horrors worse than what we witnessed in the 1990s,” Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center, told Drop Site.
Upon taking office, Trump likewise revoked Venezuelans’ “Temporary Protected Status,” leaving 600,000 at risk of deportation.
The Nicolás Maduro government has not commented on the Venezuelan nationals sent to the infamous US naval base.
On Monday, Venezuelan authorities received two flights carrying 190 citizens deported by the Trump administration. The Associated Press reported that three men who secured a restraining order blocking their transfer to Guantánamo were among those deported.
Neither Caracas nor Washington have disclosed information on further flights. Trump administration Special Envoy Richard Grenell met with President Maduro in late January and the deportation of Venezuelan aliens was one of the main discussion topics, according to reports.
For its part, the Venezuelan government has emphasized the need for its citizens to return in “dignified” conditions. Officials stated that Monday’s flights from Texas marked the reactivation of the “Return to the Homeland” plan.
The program was launched in 2018 and originally conceived as a mechanism for Venezuelan migrants to return to the country. According to Foreign Ministry figures, over 31 thousand nationals had come back to Venezuela via 172 flights and one maritime trip by the end of 2022.
Edited and with additional reporting by José Luis Granados Ceja from Mexico City, Mexico.
