Trump will send up to 30K illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay: ‘It’s a tough place to get out of’

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Wednesday that he plans to send up to 30,000 illegal immigrants to detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his campaign to mass-deport migrants who have committed crimes.

Trump inked a memorandum requiring the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prepare for migrants there after previewing the plan while signing the anti-illegal immigration Laken Riley Act.

“Today, I’m also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said.

“Most people don’t even know that we have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

5 Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign the Laken Riley Act at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 29, 2025. REUTERS

Trump added that “some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back.”

“So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo,” he said.

5 ATF NY, along with DEA New York, HSI, ERO and other federal law enforcement partners, arrested an unknown individual in a continuing effort to assist DHS with their immigration enforcement efforts. ATFNewYork/X

“This will double our capacity immediately, right? And … it’s a tough place to get out of.”

The memorandum requires the Defense Department and DHS to “take all appropriate actions to expand” facilities “to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

The United States has a long-term lease from Cuba’s government for a naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, which has housed terrorism suspects since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

Only 15 terror suspects remain there, down from nearly 700 in 2003.

5 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detain a suspect during a multi-agency targeted enforcement operation in Lyons, Illinois, US, on Sunday, Jan. 26, 2025. Bloomberg via Getty Images

A small number of asylum seekers intercepted at sea also currently are housed in a migration facility in the 45-square-mile territory — though historically there were many more.

About 50,000 Haitians and Cubans were housed at Guantanamo from 1991 to 1996 — at a cost of about $250 million, the New York Times reported. The majority of Haitians were denied asylum while the opposite was true of the Cubans.

Border czar Tom Homan told reporters on the White House driveway Wednesday afternoon that “there’s already a migrant center” at the Cuba outpost and “it’s been there for decades.”

5 A U.S. Army guard stands ready in a “pod” inside the Camp 6 detention facility at the U.S. Naval Station on October 2, 2007, in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Getty Images

“So we’re just going to expand upon that existing migrant center,” Homan said.

“Every facility, including Gitmo, will have the highest standards,” he added, saying flights to the Communist island would be reserved for “the worst of the worst.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the White House will attempt to begin the initiative using “resources that we currently have,” but that additional funds may be sought in a budget reconciliation bill currently in the works in Congress.

Attorneys for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo said they expect litigation if Trump’s threat comes to fruition — with would-be deportees claiming lack of due process and access to courts, as well as allegedly substandard conditions and potentially the denial of access to asylum processes.

Wells Dixon of the Center for Constitutional Rights told The Post that the Guantanamo immigration facility is “an old decrepit building” that’s roughly the size of a small school and that Trump’s initiative might cost “billions if not trillions of dollars,” based on the nearly half-billion-dollar annual price tag for the existing terrorist detention facilities.

“Everything is more expensive” there due to the base’s remote location in Cuba’s far south, Dixon said.

5 A U.S. soldier looks into a cell of the “Gitmo” maximum security detention center on October 22, 2016 at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Getty Images

“Every time an airplane lands at Guantanamo it costs over $100,000,” he explained.

“If migrants are brought to Guantanamo… the Center for Constitutional Rights will challenge their indefinite detention in federal court.” Dixon vowed. “Guantanamo has done nothing but demean the standing of the United States in the world.”

Dixon, who said he represents one current inmate after standing for “dozens” who have been released, said that he views Trump’s plan as “performative cruelty that’s meant to demonize non-US citizens and to outrage civil society.”

Jonathan Hafetz, a law professor at Seton Hall University who also has represented Guantanamo Bay terrorism suspects, said that he believed “there would be a number of litigations” against Trump’s plan and noted several Supreme Court rulings against the George W. Bush administration’s handling of terror detainees.

“Guantanamo has a notorious history of being where people are taken to bring them outside the law,” he said. “Every time that they’ve brought prisoners to Guantanamo first … they did so partly to deny them access to courts and hold them in substandard conditions.”

It “would be novel, taking people from the United States and then moving them to Guantanamo,” Hafetz added.

“I think to the extent that they use Guantanamo to deny legal protections, there would be some success there [in litigation],” he said. “It’s uncertain how the courts would react. It’s a different Supreme Court now. But there would be some judicial pushback.”