The first military flight from the United States transporting undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay was scheduled to depart on Tuesday (4), U.S. officials said.
The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told Fox Business Network on Tuesday that at least two deportation flights were “in progress,” but did not provide further details.
Later, CNN reported that one of the flights had “about nine or 10” people on board who were detained in the U.S. without valid immigration documents.
The Trump administration requested that the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security expand an immigrant detention unit at the military base to accommodate more than 30,000 people.
Trump has increasingly turned to the military to help execute his immigration agenda, including sending additional troops to the border, using military aircraft to transport immigrants out of the United States, and opening military bases to help house them.
However, military flights are an expensive way to transport immigrants. Reuters found that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 per immigrant.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that the plan is not to keep people in Guantánamo indefinitely and that the administration would follow U.S. law.
The base already houses a facility for immigrants – separate from the high-security prison for terrorism suspects – which has been used occasionally for decades, including to hold Haitians and Cubans caught at sea.
The administration did not disclose how much it will cost to expand Guantánamo, which was created in 2002 to detain foreign militants following the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.Partnership with El Salvador
The news of the first flights, containing deportees of unknown nationality, comes a day after El Salvador offered to accept undocumented immigrants from any country — and even incarcerated American citizens. The announcement by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, followed a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rubio praised El Salvador’s willingness to accept deportees. “No country has ever made a friendship offer like this. [It’s] the most extraordinary and unprecedented migration agreement anywhere in the world,” he said.
Immigration advocates, meanwhile, expressed concern about the legality of deporting those who are illegally in the U.S. to countries from which they are not.
“Obviously, we will have to study this on our part; there are obviously legalities involved. We have a constitution, we have all kinds of things,” Rubio said on Monday (3).
Sources: Reuters, CNN, and The Guardian