Guantánamo Migrant Operation has kept fewer than 500 prisoners, and none in tents

The American military troops have taken some of the tents that they hastily set up at an empty corner of the American naval station in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, three months after President Trump had imposed preparations to accommodate a maximum of 30,000 migrants at the base.

Migrants have never been held in the tents and no migrant bump has never occurred. On Monday the operation was only 32 migrants, in buildings that were founded years ago.

A total of 497 migrants have been held there, because immigration and customs enforcement uses the basis as a road station to keep a small number of detainees that are designated for deportation.

Instead, the domestic security and defense departments have reached an agreement to accommodate dozens, no thousands, ice spiritules at the base on a certain day. The full costs of the operation have not been announced.

The army says that the migrant activities in Guantánamo can run and expand, depending on the need. But the decision to dismantle at least some of the tents shows that the Defense and Homeland Security departments are currently not planning to house tens of thousands of migrants on the base, as the president suggested.

The tents and farmers who served as a background of the High -profile 7 February Visit by Kristi NameThe Minister of Interior Security, has been conceived and stored for future use, according to an official from the Ministry of Defense, who spoke about the condition of anonymity because the president’s migrant mission is considered politically sensitive.

During the weekend, the Task Force that was responsible for migrant detention in Guantánamo Bay, 32 migrants in anticipation of deportation held and had around 725 employees, usually uniformed army and marine troops, with 100 employed by ICE as security officials or contractors.

That is more than 22 uniformed military and ice cream workers for every migrant.

When Minister of Defense visited Pete Hegseeth in February, the Pentagon said The Task Force counted 1,000 Military and ice cream staff. Since then, the Ministry of Defense has estimated that it has spent approximately $ 40 million on the first month From the detention operation, including $ 3 million on the tents that were never used.

Democrats in the Congress and other critics of the operation have mentioned a waste of funds from taxpayers and military means because home migrants in American facilities are considerably cheaper.

In A letter on FridaySenators Gary Peters from Michigan and Alex Padilla from California asked Mr Trump to order an evaluation of the operation by the Ministry of Government Efficiency for fraud, waste or misconduct.

“Although no one does not agree that violent criminals have to be deported, this mission is under a doubtful legal authority, undermines the decent process and is untenable – the waste of millions of dollars in tax money,” the senators wrote.

The senators said that during a visit to Guantánamo in March it was told that the tents did not meet detention standards and that there were no plans to use them to keep migrants.

A senior military leader recently testified that to keep 30,000 migrants there in tents, the Pentagon there should mobilize more than 9,000 American troops. The costs are the feeding and accommodation of the troops and transporting there.

That ratio of one service member for every three or four migrants was intended to handle migrants like they Housed in Guantánamo in the nineties: Haitian and Cuban citizens understood at sea while trying to reach the United States.

The model in the 1990s treated the tent camps as a humanitarian rescue mission, no law enforcement eviction and defense officials said that it could be used again for similar reasons.

But the memorandum of the term of 7 March reaches between representatives of the Pentagon and the Homeland Security department to perform the Order of Mr. Trump, defines the migrants who can be held there as a whole of the families who were sheltered there in the nineties.

The current agreement defines those who are eligible for detention in Guantánamo as “illegal alien beings with a coherence for a transnational criminal organization or criminal drug activity.” The Trump government regards them as violent, although that description is based on ice profiling, no criminal convictions.

The two parties agreed that the Ministry of Interior Security is responsible for all transfers, releases and deletions. The document was the first Published by CBS News.

Of the 497 men who have been held there since 4 February 178, Venezuelans who were flown to the Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras and transferred to Venezuelan planes were.

On April 23, a chartered deportation flight stopped from Texas near Guantánamo and previously picked up a Venezuelan citizen Delivering 174 male and female deportees To Soto Cano. On that day, 42 other migrants of unknown nationalities were held in Guantánamo, according to people who are familiar with the transfer that were not authorized by ICE to discuss it.

Another 93 were Nicaraguans who were repatriated by American charter flights on 3, 16 and 30 April.

Separately, a federal court will re -see two military flights that may have delivered Venezuelans to El Salvador in Guantánamo in the ruling of a judicial order that the Ministry of Interior Security is by deporting migrants to third countries without giving migrants or their lawyers.

The order also requires that the so -called deportees are given the opportunity to claim that they would be endangered by deportation to that third country, said Trina RealMutoThe executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance and a lawyer in the case. The issue was emphasized by an agreement between the American and Salvadoran governments to lock Venezuelan deportees in El Salvador against payment, but essentially as a favor for Mr Trump.

The Ministry of Justice argues that the flight of March 31 was a military operation performed by the Pentagon, not by the Homeland Security department, and so it falls out of the reach of the judge’s order.

The judge, Brian E. Murphy of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, has ordered the government to reveal certain information about the flights to lawyers who plead legal protection for immigrants.