More than 30 members of Congress demanded the Trump administration stop the use of Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention, lift sanctions contributing to Cuba’s humanitarian crisis, and abandon reported plans for US military action, as it could contribute to further migration.
“US policies have deliberately targeted Cuban civilians and contributed to their displacement as well as their deaths,” the members of Congress write. “Planning for their detention at Guantanamo is not a response to migration – it is an attempt to contain the consequences of the exact policies that are driving it.”
Invasion Could Worsen Influx
Renewed US sanctions on Cuba were ordered by President Trump shortly after taking office, as the administration believes the “regime has long supported acts of international terrorism.” The US President has also been expressing interest in regime change after January’s operation to abduct President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, saying, “Cuba is next, by the way.”
By April, the situation had become dire: Mexico, Spain, and Brazil expressed “deep concern regarding the grave humanitarian crisis that the people of Cuba are enduring, and call for the adoption of necessary measures to alleviate this situation.”
85 human rights organizations also decried the plan to establish a “camp” at Guantanamo Bay’s military base for Cubans fleeing the hardships brought on by the US blockade in a letter to Congress.
Now, members of U.S. Congress, led by Delia Ramirez, a representative from Illinois, have written a letter to the departments of defense, state and homeland security, highlighting that any military action against the island could lead to more destabilization, driving even more migration towards the US. “It must be unequivocally rejected,” they wrote.
Guantanamo Bay facilities were used to house suspected terrorist-related suspects after then-president George W. Bush set it up with the purpose of dealing with “enemy combatants.” The camp, despite many efforts, remains outside of the Geneva Conventions and has been contested as a site of torture. Many detainees remain there without trial. As of January 2025, at least nine inmates have died in the camp, seven of them by apparent suicide. Though the US argues the land is being leased, Cuba says the arrangement is illegal.
Big Plans Undelivered
Despite the notoriety and controversy around the facility, Trump signed an executive order to open a migrant detention center there shortly after his inauguration. It included an instruction to prepare for 30,000 of “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people” to be housed.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump had said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
At the time, Vincent Warren, head of the Center for Constitutional Rights legal advocacy group, said: “Trump’s order [sends] a clear message … Migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supporters.”
However, according to a CBS News review of internal government documents, the detention facilities remain mostly empty a year on, despite the highly publicized expansion costing the US military over $70 million, an increase from the previously public estimate of $40 million.
Documents show 832 immigration detainees have been moved to the facilities over the past year on over 100 flights. On May 11, only six immigration detainees resided at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, all Haitian. Of the 30,000 beds promised by Trump, federal documents indicate the current capacity is around 400 beds, with fewer than 2 percent occupied on May 11.
Despite the low inmate numbers, the number of staff remains significant, with employees outnumbering detainees 100 to one as of last week. In figures provided to Congress, it was revealed that 522 Department of Defense personnel and 60 U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and non-military staff are assigned to the mission as well.
Political Theater?
American news network CBS revealed earlier this year that despite high-ranking officials promising the site would only be used for the detention of “the worst” offenders, Guantanamo also held detainees categorized as “low-risk” because they lacked serious criminal records, or even any at all. This was allowed by a government memo from April 2025.
Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has filed several lawsuits regarding what she alleges is unconstitutional use of Guantanamo, told CBS the detention efforts at Guantanamo are “nothing more than political theater like so many other administration policies.”
“Not only is the Trump administration’s use of Guantanamo unprecedented and illegal, but it serves no legitimate policy goal given the financial and logistical burdens of using this notorious military base for immigration purposes,” Gelernt said.
