The Trump administration has flown all of the migrants it had held in Guantánamo Bay out of the facility there, NBC News has learned from three sources familiar with the operation and flight data.
In response to a lawsuit, the Trump administration said that there were 178 immigrants, all from Venezuela, housed at Guantánamo Bay as of early Thursday.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official told NBC News that 177 of the 178 migrants at Guantánamo Bay were deported on Thursday. The one other person was sent to a detention facility in the U.S., the official said.
Also Thursday, Honduras’ foreign ministry announced that the country had accepted a flight with what it said were 174 Venezuelan immigrants from the U.S. on board, who would immediately be removed from Honduras to Venezuela.
The official also said that the varying numbers between the administration and Honduras could just be a discrepancy.
A picture of the plane on which the immigrants were flown to Honduras was tweeted out by Honduras’ foreign minister. The tail number on the plane in the picture corresponds to a flight that went from Guantánamo to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Thursday, according to FlightRadar24.com.
The Trump administration had made a show of moving migrants to Guantánamo, saying it would be sending the “worst of the worst.”
The senior DHS official told NBC News that it plans to send more immigrants to Guantánamo, and that the base is being seen as a “staging area” to get migrants to other countries. But two sources familiar with the matter said that DHS has asked the Department of Defense to look for alternative locations, and that DOD is considering other places like Fort Bliss in Texas.
The removal raises new questions about what rights immigrants have once in custody in Guantánamo Bay. Lawyers from immigrant rights’ groups sued the Trump administration to have in-person access to detainees and 72 hours notice before planes carrying migrants to or away from Guantánamo took off.
In response, Justice Department lawyers representing the Trump administration argued on Thursday that migrants could request to speak to lawyers by phone, that it violated the operational authority of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to be required to give notice and that the administration could hold immigrants in Guantánamo Bay longer than six months. Previous court orders have stated that migrants cannot be held in ICE detention longer than six months and that detention standards should not be punitive.
Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer for the ACLU challenging the Trump administration in the lawsuit, told NBC News: “We will have to verify what type of access is going to be able to be given by phone and make sure it is meaningful. We will also seek in-person access where necessary.”
“It’s ironic to say the least that they are now telling us they have phone access but it appears that our clients have been removed,” Gelernt said.
In its response to the lawsuit in which it said it had 178 immigrants Guantánamo, the Trump administration also detailed where in the base they were being held. One hundred and twenty-seven were housed in Camp VI, the high-security detention facility typically used to detain people accused of terrorism by the United States, according to the administration. Another 51 were housed at the Migrant Operation Center, an existing structure previously reserved for migrants interdicted at sea.
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