GUANTANAMO BAY — President Trump announced plans to convert the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into a detention center capable of holding 30,000 immigration detainees facing deportation. According to internal federal documents, on May 11 the U.S. government was holding six immigration detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, all nationals of Haiti.

Fewer than two percent of the detention beds at the base were occupied on that date, internal federal documents show. The facility's capacity to hold immigration detainees is limited to roughly 400 beds, far below the figure Trump cited in January 2025, when he said officials would set up 30,000 detention beds at the site.

Over the past year, 832 immigration detainees have been transferred to the Guantanamo Bay base on more than 100 flights, according to federal documents. Officials began sending groups of detainees arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement inside the United States to Guantanamo Bay for detention pending deportation in February 2025.

Figures provided to Congress show the Department of Defense has 522 personnel assisting with immigration detention at the base, and around 60 ICE and non-military staff are assigned to the mission. Government employees assigned to the operation outnumber detainees by roughly 100 to one. The effort is expected to cost 73 million dollars for the U.S. military, up from a previously reported estimate of 40 million dollars, according to information provided by the Defense Department.

Low-risk detainees have been housed at the Migration Operations Center, a facility that previously held asylum-seekers intercepted at sea, while high-risk detainees have been held at Camp VI, a section of the prison complex that continues to hold some terrorism suspects. An internal government memo governing the operation gave officials wide-ranging discretion, including the ability to transfer non-criminal detainees to the base.

In December, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary ruling that the immigration detention effort at Guantanamo Bay was "impermissibly punitive" and likely unlawful, but did not block the operation. Senator Elizabeth Warren said Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were "wasting billions in taxpayer funds on a cruel immigration agenda."

"The use of Guantanamo is nothing more than political theater like so many other administration policies," American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt said. "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," he added.

DHS spokeswoman Lauren Bis defended the policy. "If you come to our country illegally and break our laws, you could end up in Guantanamo Bay, CECOT, or a third country. Our message is clear: criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S.," she said.