Lawmakers to inspect Trump's Guantanamo detention center amid mounting questions
A bipartisan delegation from Congress plans to inspect President Donald Trump's migrant detention center at Guantanamo Bay as soon as Friday amid mounting questions surrounding the facility, according to three lawmakers invited on the trip.
Trump's plan to deport millions of migrants from the U.S. has faced early roadblocks, chief among them being detention controversy. The president views Guantanamo as not only a solution for expanding the nation's detention capacity, but also as a way to send a message to immigrants that illegal entry into the U.S. could land them in a notorious prison camp.
The visit from members of the House Armed Services Committee would be the first congressional delegation to examine the facility since Trump ordered ICE to detain migrants at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba in early February.
Republicans want to tout the successes of Trump’s immigration crackdown and show the remote site in the Caribbean meets U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention standards. ICE detention is supposed to be non-punitive and requires safe and humane treatment of detainees.
Democrats want to exercise their congressional right to conduct surprise inspections of ICE detention facilities, which in the case of Guantanamo is something they say they have been working toward behind the scenes with GOP colleagues. By contrast, Democrats have been going it alone in their bid to try to enter other federal buildings in Washington in recent weeks over concerns with Trump administration policies, only to be turned away by security.
There are no commercial flights to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo, and the planned military flight would provide lawmakers the opportunity to visit the hard-to-reach facility.
The U.S. military base in Cuba is known for holding terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. It gained notoriety following allegations of torture and mistreatment during the U.S. war on terrorism launched by former President George W. Bush's administration.
The Trump administration has rapidly built a tent city on base with more than 60 soft-sided structures, seen in photos distributed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The administration temporarily halted migrant transfers to the base after media reports alleged substandard conditions and the ACLU and other organizations sued, alleging detainees had no access to attorneys, family or due process. A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately return a request for comment on these allegations.
There are currently fewer than 24 migrants being detained at facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., has conducted weekly inspections of the ICE detention center in his district and said he has concerns about flying migrants to Guantanamo. He told Paste BN he was invited but doesn't plan to join the delegation because of a scheduling conflict.
“It's a tough facility to access, so sending migrants to a facility (where it’s) not easy to conduct oversight concerns me,” he said, adding that it’s “one of the most expensive places in the world for taxpayers to support the detention of anybody."
“If the goal of the Trump administration is to cut costs and find efficiencies, they're not going to do it in Guantanamo Bay," he said.
Three Democrat members of the committee confirmed the plans to Paste BN. A spokeswoman for the Republican chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., declined to comment. Paste BN contacted four other Republicans on the committee that oversees the Pentagon who did not immediately return requests for comment.
"The fact that they were using that base to move immigrants through − I just want to check out for myself, with my own eyes, what the conditions are over there," said Rep. Derek Tran, D-Calif., who plans to attend the trip. "I think they stopped that process but just in case that starts up again, that's the intent and purpose of the trip for me."
Trump has deported 37,660 people to their countries of origin or other parts of the world during his first month in office, according to statistics provided to Reuters in February, below the monthly average of 57,000 removals and returns in the last full year of Biden's administration.
The number was lower in part because border crossings plunged, and recent migrants are among the easiest for the government to remove.
Trump said in a post on his social media site on Saturday that during his "first full month in office," running from Jan. 20 to Feb. 20, migrant encounters at the border dropped to 8,300.
That number would be far below the roughly 190,000 migrant encounters in February 2024. U.S. Customs and Border Protection hasn't posted official numbers for February 2025.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said ICE is transferring “the worst of the worst” to Guantanamo but attorneys have confirmed to Paste BN that some detainees had no criminal record other than an immigration violation.
ICE removed 177 Venezuelan nationals from Guantanamo on Feb. 20, largely emptying the facility before another 10 migrants were transferred there last week, according to media reports.
Trump ordered construction of a detention center to hold as many as 30,000 migrants in Guantanamo. The administration has also announced plans to build makeshift detention sites on military bases inside the United States, with the first expected to open at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, later this month.
ICE's 41,500 beds in detention centers nationwide were oversubscribed as of Tuesday, with an average daily population of more 42,500, according to the agency's biweekly detention report.
On Saturday, attorneys for the ACLU and other organizations sued the Trump administration seeking to halt the transfer to Guantanamo of 10 immigrants in ICE detention, calling the detentions arbitrary and unprecedented.
Tom Vanden Brook contributed reporting.
(This story has been updated)