As Trump Holds 72 Migrants at Guantánamo From 26 Countries Including the UK, What Is His Long-Term Plan?
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In a shocking development reported two days ago by CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security has revealed that it is currently holding 72 migrants at Guantánamo from 26 countries.
At least one of these migrants is a UK national, while the other countries whose nationals are held are Brazil, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, St. Kitts-Nevis, Venezuela and Vietnam.
A month ago, shockwaves reverberated around the world when, as I discussed here, Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to send at least 9,000 migrants to Guantánamo from a variety of countries, including 800 from Europe.
Photos and Report: Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure on July 2, 2025 and the Growing Threat of the Gitmoization of the US
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On Wednesday July 2, the latest “First Wednesday” global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place — four in the US, three in Europe, and one in Mexico City. An additional US vigil took place on Saturday July 5.
Please see the photos below, and read on for my analysis of the importance of the vigils, not only for the men still held, but also to highlight how, since Donald Trump came back to the White House, it has become increasingly apparent that the core injustice of Guantánamo — holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, and without providing any evidence for doing so — is being shamefully and cynically repurposed to justify detentions in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office in January.
Did a Leak Stop Trump From Sending 9,000 Migrants to Guantánamo, Including 800 Europeans?
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Yesterday, marking UN Torture Day, I posted my latest article on Close Guantánamo, which I’m cross-posting here, with reflections on torture past and present at the prison, Donald Trump’s shameful and lawless decision to co-opt Guantánamo for his deeply racist “war on migrants” — and the latest news involving Haitian migrants. I also publicized a recent letter to Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth calling for the closure of Guantánamo by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and 14 of her Congressional colleagues, which was, in particular, prompted by alarming reports two weeks ago that the Trump administration was intending to send 9,000 new migrants to Guantanamo, including 800 Europeans. The story was decried as “fake news” by the White House, but I suggested that it was in fact a plan, and that it was leaked by officials within the administration to get it dropped, which seems to have quietly happened after numerous foreign governments expressed outrage about the proposals.
Yesterday, June 26, was the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, first marked in 1998 to commemorate the historic day in 1987 when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into effect, and also to mark the historic day in 1945 when the United Nations Charter, the founding document of the UN, was signed in San Francisco by 50 countries.
Despite the best intentions of those who worked assiduously to create the Torture Convention over many decades, many of its signatories have — either openly or covertly — failed to fulfill their obligations to prevent the use of torture.
Particularly prominent amongst the violators of the Torture Convention is the United States, which, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outsourced torture to a number of notorious right-abusing regimes in the Middle East, and also implemented a covert global torture program via a number of CIA “black site” torture prisons scattered around the world. I covered much of this story as the lead writer of a UN report about secret detention in 2010, and the CIA’s role was scrutinized and condemned in a torture report undertaken by the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose 500-page unclassified summary was published in December 2014.
The Alarming Kafkaesque Basis of Trump’s “War on Migrants”
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NOTE: On June 18, I was interviewed by Chris Cook for his weekly, hour-long Gorilla Radio show about this article. You can find the show here, and I’m in the second half, after Dan Kovalik talking about Israel’s war on Iran in the first half.
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On June 4, in a memorable, 69-page memorandum opinion, Judge James Boasberg, the Chief Judge of the District Court in Washington, D.C., began a ruling relating to Venezuelan migrants deported by the Trump administration to a mega-prison for alleged terrorists in El Salvador by quoting from Franz Kafka’s “The Trial,” in which the protagonist, Josef K., “awakens to encounter two strange men outside his room,” and “realizes that he is under arrest.” However, “When he asks the strangers why, he receives no answer. ‘We weren’t sent to tell you that,’ one says. ‘Proceedings are under way and you’ll learn everything in due course.’”
As Judge Boasberg added, “Bewildered by these men and distressed by their message, K. tries to comfort himself that he lives in ‘a state governed by law,’ one where ‘all statutes [are] in force.’ He therefore demands again, ‘How can I be under arrest? And in this manner?’ ‘Now there you go again,’ the guard replies. ‘We don’t answer such questions.’ Undeterred, K. offers his ‘papers’ and demands their arrest warrant. ‘Good heavens!’ the man scolds. ‘There’s been no mistake.’ ‘[O]ur department,’ he assures K., is only ‘attracted by guilt’; it ‘doesn’t seek [it] out . . . That’s the Law.’ ‘I don’t know that law,’ K. responds. ‘You’ll feel it eventually,’ the guard says.”
As Judge Boasberg proceeded to explain, “Such was the situation into which Frengel Reyes Mota, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, and scores of other Venezuelan noncitizens say they were plunged on March 15, 2025. In the early morning hours, Venezuelans held by the Department of Homeland Security at El Valle Detention Facility in Texas were awakened from their cells, taken to a separate room, shackled, and informed that they were being transferred. To where? That they were not told. When asked, some guards reportedly laughed and said that they did not know; others told the detainees, incorrectly, that they were being transferred to another immigration facility or to Mexico or Venezuela.”
Photos and Report: The 29th Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure, June 4, 2025
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On Wednesday June 4, campaigners across the US — in Washington, D.C., New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit — and in London, Brussels and Mexico City, held the latest “First Wednesday” coordinated vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay. In Belgrade, former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil, and on Saturday June 7, campaigners in Cobleskill, NY rounded off the week of actions with a defiant protest in the rain.
I can’t express sufficiently my admiration for the small but big-hearted global family of activists who come out together once a month to defy the collective amnesia that, for the most part, has engulfed Guantánamo throughout most of the 23 wretched years of its existence. Many thanks to those involved, from various Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, as well as numerous other supporting groups.
Please see below for photos of the vigils, and read on for my assessment of why it remains important to campaign for Guantánamo’s closure — including the performative cruelty of Donald Trump’s use of the prison in his horrendous “war on migrants,” and how, inadvertently, he has demonstrated that the prison itself, although still holding 15 men, has become politically irrelevant, furthering arguments for its closure.
Podcast: Guantánamo’s Forgotten Prisoners, Trump’s “War on Migrants” and the Horrors of El Salvador’s CECOT Prison on Due Dissidence
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This article was originally published on May 27 on the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
Many thanks to Misty Winston for interviewing me two weeks ago for her show on Due Dissidence, a channel that we might call an alt-left alternative to the plague of alt-right streaming channels that dominate so much social media.
Misty and I have spoken many times before, beginning in the days when she was an indefatigable activist for Julian Assange, and, after finding a temporary home on various other platforms, it was great to catch up with her on a channel that, I hope, values her presence.
We spoke for 90 minutes, and the show was live-streamed on Rumble, and also on X, and was subsequently posted in its entirety on Substack.
Updates on Trump’s Deportation Obsession and His Open Warfare on the US Courts, and My Interview on Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook
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Many thanks to Chris Cook in western Canada for having me on his weekly Gorilla Radio show on Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in the horrendous “war on migrants” that Donald Trump initiated when he took office three months ago. The interview is available here, on Gorilla Radio’s Substack, taking up the first half of the hour-long show, with Canadian author Ray McGinnis in the second half.
Chris and I last spoke in February, just after Donald Trump had started using Guantánamo to hold migrants — the majority of whom were Venezuelans, who were accused, without evidence, of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. I wrote about the use of Guantánamo for migrants in a series of articles here, here, here, here, here and here, with a summary on the Close Guantánamo website on March 21.
By that point, Trump had begun shifting his focus to an even more alarming location than Guantánamo, sending 238 Venezuelan migrants and 23 Salvadorians — all, again, accused of being gang members, without any evidence being provided — on a one-way trip to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison (the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or, in English, the Terrorism Confinement Center) on March 15.
No One Is Safe As Trump Gleefully Deports Migrants to El Salvador’s Mega-Guantánamo Without Evidence, Or Even Via An “Administrative Error”
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.
In the sordid, chaotic, belligerent and openly racist “war on migrants” that Donald Trump declared when he took office on January 20, two particular truths about the administration’s intentions have become increasingly evident, and both of them are profoundly disturbing.
The first is that no immigrant to the US from anywhere in the world — but mostly, to date, from countries in Central or South America — is safe from arbitrary detention and deportation, and, in particular, the threat of being deported, not to their home countries, but to a notorious prison in El Salvador, where prisoners are held indefinitely without charge or trial, dehumanized, half-starved and subjected to relentless violence. The CECOT prison, established under El Salvador’s dictatorial president, Nayib Bukele, is nothing less than a futuristic, turbo-charged version of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay.
The second cause for deep alarm is the Trump administration’s absolute contempt for any legal challenges to what it aggressively claims is its right to detain and deport anyone it feels like detaining and deporting. Primarily, to date, Venezuelans, these men are routinely described as dangerous “high-threat aliens”, gang members and terrorists at war with the US, although the administration has failed to back up its hysterical claims with anything resembling evidence.
Disturbingly, the administration insists that all of its claimed deliberations about who to detain and deport are shielded from any kind of scrutiny or review because of national security concerns, claims that are nothing less than the thinnest of covers for what is actually the the unacceptable and unconstitutional exercise of unfettered executive power.
Trump’s Migrant Deportations: Judge Says Nazis in US in WWII Had More Rights to Contest Their Removal Than Venezuelan Migrants Now
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Last Wednesday (March 26), Judge Patricia Millett, a judge in the appeals court in Washington D.C., delivered a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport 238 Venezuelan migrants — allegedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang — to CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security “terrorist” prison, where they are all now imprisoned without charge or trial, for at least a year, and perhaps more, at a cost to the US taxpayer of $6 million, even though no evidence was presented by the Trump administration to confirm that they were gang members, and even though, in some cases, compelling testimony from family members would seem to confirm that they had no involvement whatsoever with Tren de Aragua.
At the hearing on March 26, Judge Millett told the government’s main lawyer, Drew Ensign, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here”, in an exchange relating to whether or not, as the Guardian described it, “Venezuelans targeted for removal under the Alien Enemies Act had time to contest the Trump administration’s assertion that they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang before they were put on planes and deported to El Salvador.”
Trump’s disturbing invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798
Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in a “proclamation” on March 15, in what appeared to be a nakedly authoritarian attempt to deport Venezuelans alleged to be members of the gang without making any effort to establish whether or not that was the case.
Horror As Trump Invokes the Alien Enemies Act, Defies a Judge and Sends Innocent Venezuelans to El Salvador’s “Mega-Prison”
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Since Donald Trump launched a cynical, cruel and racist “war on migrants” when he took office two months ago, he has sought to use the existing “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay to hold migrants described as “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.” Most of these men — over 300 in total, just 1% of the 30,000 Trump pledged to imprison when he first announced his Guantánamo plans on January 29 — have been Venezuelans, although no evidence has been provided that any of them were the “high-priority criminal aliens” that Trump alleged, with copious amounts of evidence subsequently emerging to demonstrate that their purported involvement with a notorious Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, was based solely on their tattoos.
Trump’s rationale for using Guantánamo has also been unclear. It appears, primarily, to have been an expensive act of “performative cruelty”, given how expensive it is to use Guantánamo, especially when all of the men detained could have been deported from the existing ICE facilities on the US mainland where they were previously held, a notion reinforced by the fact that most of the men were subsequently deported, while others were ignominiously returned to ICE facilities on US soil.
In an article for the Close Guantánamo website, I have just provided a detailed review of Trump’s Guantánamo migrant policy, but in this follow-up article I examine an even more disturbing development, involving Trump bypassing Guantánamo, and inappropriately invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants from the US mainland, flagrantly ignoring a temporary restraining order issued by a federal court judge preventing the use of the Act to deport migrants, and immediately sending 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, along with 23 alleged Salvadorian gang members, to be imprisoned in the notorious CECOT “mega-prison”, established by El Salvador’s hardline President Nayib Bukele — again, without any evidence having been provided to back up the administration’s assertions regarding these men’s gang membership.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
