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It's been several months since the Trump administration said it would send up to 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At the time, skeptics of that plan said it would be too expensive and logistically complicated to pull off. So how many migrants have been sent there since that January announcement? NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer has an update.
SACHA PFEIFFER, BYLINE: The first hint that Guantanamo might not be an easy place to house large number of migrants came when President Trump said this on January 29.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad, we don't even trust the countries to hold them.
PFEIFFER: But the U.S. has nowhere near that number of detention beds at Guantanamo. That's according to Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which gets reports on conditions at GTMO for migrants who have been detained there.
VINCE WARREN: There haven't been 30,000 beds in decades. The facility is decrepit. It's been falling apart. It's in disrepair.
PFEIFFER: So after Trump's announcement, the U.S. military began putting up tents at Guantanamo to hold migrants. But since then, some of the tents have been removed. As for how many have actually housed migrants, here's Democratic New York Congressman Jerry Nadler.
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JERRY NADLER: Thus far, the tents have never been used.
PFEIFFER: He was speaking at a House Judiciary Committee in late April.
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NADLER: Instead, the Trump administration has detained the grand total of 400 migrants in the base's hard-side facilities.
PFEIFFER: By hard-side facilities, he means existing buildings, including dorm-like rooms. Since his comments, the number of migrants sent to and from Guantanamo has increased to about 500, according to a court filing this month. And usually, only a few dozen migrants are held there at a time. The bill for that, Nadler said, is...
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NADLER: Costing American taxpayers over $40 million. Where is Elon Musk when you really need him? Talk about inefficient. Talk about a waste of taxpayer money.
PFEIFFER: I sent the Department of Homeland Security a list of 13 questions about its migrant operation at Guantanamo and got a brief reply email that said, this story is fake news. But a congressional delegation that toured Guantanamo in March has supplied some details. One delegate was Democratic Michigan Senator Gary Peters. Here he is at a congressional hearing in May.
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GARY PETERS: On the day that I visited, there were 87 people in custody, and my understanding is that's a pretty normal number.
PFEIFFER: He and other delegates were told Guantanamo can hold only about 200 migrants at any given point. They typically stay on the island for just a short period.
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PETERS: When we fly them down there, we keep them there a while, then we fly them back to the United States. I think that's kind of outrageous.
PFEIFFER: The Trump administration said in a court filing this month that it's using Guantanamo for, quote, "staging for final removal," but it has not explained why it can't deport migrants directly from the U.S. to their final destinations or why it's briefly sending some migrants to Guantanamo only to return them to the U.S. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt has a theory.
LEE GELERNT: There's no question. They're trying to scare immigrants. They're trying to keep Guantanamo stuck in people's minds, and immigrants are scared that they may get sent there.
PFEIFFER: He has sued to stop the government from sending migrants to Guantanamo, which he thinks is meant to frighten them into self-deporting.
GELERNT: It's probably pretty effective. I mean, we're starting to see people give up for fear of being sent to Guantanamo or sent to El Salvador or sent to other places. They're giving up and they're going back to countries where they fled.
PFEIFFER: That pleases another member of Congress who recently toured Guantanamo - Republican Mike Collins of Georgia. In comments posted on his Instagram account, he said the cost of sending migrants to Guantanamo is worth every dollar.
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MIKE COLLINS: No matter what it's going to take, we need to make sure that we spend it so that we get President Trump's mission accomplished, and that's securing our border and taking our country back. You know, the next time I go down there, I want to make sure that I see that place full of those criminals heading out of our country and heading home.
PFEIFFER: But whether Guantanamo is prepared to hold anywhere close to 30,000 migrants continues to appear doubtful, just as skeptics predicted when the plan was unveiled.
Sacha Pfeiffer, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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