Trump Administration Has Cleared Migrants Out of Guantánamo Bay

The Trump administration has flown all of the migrants it had held in Guantánamo Bay out of the facility there, NBC News has learned from three sources familiar with the operation and flight data.

In response to a lawsuit, the Trump administration said that there were 178 immigrants, all from Venezuela, housed at Guantánamo Bay as of early Thursday.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that 177 of the 178 migrants at Guantánamo Bay were deported on Thursday. The one other person was sent to a detention facility in the U.S., the official said.

Also Thursday, Honduras’ foreign ministry announced that the country had accepted a flight with what it said were 174 Venezuelan immigrants from the U.S. on board, who would immediately be removed from Honduras to Venezuela.

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The Trump administration had made a show of moving migrants to Guantánamo, saying it would be sending the “worst of the worst.”

The senior DHS official told NBC News that it plans to send more immigrants to Guantánamo, and that the base is being seen as a “staging area” to get migrants to other countries. But two sources familiar with the matter said that DHS has asked the Department of Defense to look for alternative locations, and that DOD is considering other places like Fort Bliss in Texas.

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