The Trump administration is preparing to transfer thousands of illegal migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as soon as this week, marking a major escalation in its immigration enforcement strategy, according to documents obtained by Politico.
The government is set to significantly expand the use of the military facility to detain illegal migrants, with at least 9,000 individuals being vetted for transfer as early as Wednesday.
This marks a dramatic rise from the approximately 500 migrants who have been held at the base since February as part of a broader strategy President Donald Trump outlined in January. That plan includes the eventual use of the facility to detain as many as 30,000 illegal migrants.
While the official justification for the transfers is to free up capacity at domestic detention facilities, the use of Guantanamo — long associated with terrorism suspects — signals a starkly deterrent message aimed at curbing illegal immigration.
According to the documents, the Department of Homeland Security may move forward without notifying the migrants’ home countries in advance.
The plans, still subject to change, come amid growing pressure from the White House on Immigration and Customs Enforcement to increase enforcement. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has reportedly called for 3,000 arrests per day, while the agency struggles with limited space and is requesting additional funding from Congress to expand operations and hire more personnel.
One document lists about 800 European nationals — including 170 Russians, 100 Romanians, and one Austrian — as potential candidates for the transfers. That element of the proposal has caused alarm among State Department officials who argue that most European nations cooperate in accepting deportees, making such measures unnecessary.
“The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people,” one State Department official said. “But we’re allies.”
At the same time, legal efforts are intensifying to block the use of Guantanamo Bay for migrant detention. A federal class-action lawsuit pending in Washington claims that approximately 70 detainees currently held at the facility face “punitive” conditions, including limited food, clothing shortages, and rodent infestations.
“The government has identified no legitimate purpose that is served by holding immigrant detainees at Guantanamo, rather than at detention facilities inside the United States,” ACLU attorneys argued in the case being heard by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee.
“Instead, defendants are using the threat of detention at Guantanamo to frighten immigrants, deter future migration, induce self-deportation, and coerce people in detention to give up claims against removal and accept deportation elsewhere.”
Historically, the Guantanamo facility housed up to 780 terrorism suspects during the height of the war on terror. More recently, it has been used sporadically for illegal migrants, with the administration asserting in a February court filing that the site is meant for “temporary staging” rather than indefinite detention.
“The removal also underscores that immigration detention at [Guantanamo Bay] is intended for temporary staging and not for indefinite detention, as Petitioners have suggested in their filings,” Justice Department lawyers argued.
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