The U.S. military will fly a small group of migrants to its base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Tuesday, as the Trump administration pledges to use the site as a mass deportation detention center.
Ten migrants are on the flight, transported like previous groups on large C-17 cargo planes, said a defense official, granted anonymity to discuss the plans. Unlike other deportation flights, which have sent people back to countries from Ecuador to India, the group on this trip is far smaller and includes only migrants considered “high threat” by the U.S. government, according to the official.
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Speaking at the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called Guantanamo Bay the “perfect place” to house deported migrants, including what he called “hardened criminals.”
Hegseth spent a year at the naval station as an active-duty National Guardsman from 2004 to 2005, after it was converted into a high-security prison for suspected terrorists who participated in the 9/11 attacks. The site has survived despite multiple attempts from past administrations to close it, though its use has dwindled in recent years.
That will soon change during President Donald Trump’s second time in the White House. Last week the president ordered the military to prepare the site for a surge of deported migrants, a move that may not be legal since the base sits on Cuban territory.
A separate defense official said the migrants transported Tuesday will not be held in the same area as the suspected terrorists already at the facility and will only be there temporarily.
The Pentagon has since rushed to fulfill the order, sending around 300 service members so far to assist in the effort, per the first defense official. The naval station could eventually house some 30,000 migrants, according to Pentagon estimates.
The site was last used for a similar mission in the 1990s, when the U.S. government temporarily held around 12,000 Haitian refugees there who were seeking asylum after a coup.
Noah Robertson is the Pentagon reporter at Defense News. He previously covered national security for the Christian Science Monitor. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English and government from the College of William & Mary in his hometown of Williamsburg, Virginia.
