Venezuelan gang members become first migrants shipped to Guantanamo Bay

Homeland Security shipped its first planeload of illegal immigrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay, with officials saying the plane carried members of Venezuela’s vicious Tren de Aragua gang.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released photos Tuesday showing the migrants in gray sweatshirts and pants lined up for the flight.



The migrants have their hands in restraints and personnel in camouflage gear are shown checking the migrants over. “President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said.

There’s long been a migrant detention facility at the U.S. facility in Cuba.

Mr. Trump last week ordered the government to expand capacity at the facility, saying he wants it to be able to hold up to 30,000 migrants. Guantanamo Bay has in recent years been known as the place where the U.

S. has held terrorism suspects. Using Guantanamo Bay for migrants has ignited a wave of criticism in the U.

S., where immigrant-rights groups say it suggests a symbolic comparison of migrants and terrorists. “The cruelty of the Trump Administration knows no bounds,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

“It is grotesque, merciless, and inhumane to incarcerate immigrants at Guantanamo Bay, a place so far away from the communities these immigrants consider their only home.” Activists say using the Cuban location could mean the migrants are denied rights they would have if they were held on U.S.

soil. The facility at Guantanamo Bay is on Cuban soil and Cuba is technically sovereign. But the U.

S. leases the land and can use it for any purpose, and for as long as it wishes, under the terms of treaties dating back to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War that the U.S.

has refused to renegotiate with the communist regime that has ruled Cuba since 1959. Copyright © 2025 The Washington Times, LLC. .

.