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.
Seeking Your Support in My 20th Year as an Independent Truth-Telling Human Rights Journalist
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2025 marks the 20th year of my full-time work as a tenacious independent journalist and activist focused on issues of dehumanization, militarism, prisons, social justice and the many overlapping evils of 21st century capitalism.
Relentlessly focused on endless war and the ever-increasing extraction and use of fossil fuels, 21st century capitalism threatens our very existence on this miraculous planet, and yet its supporters, in governments, in business and in the mainstream media have conspired to hide, minimize or discredit the truth through distractions, distortions and, increasingly, direct suppression.
The main focus of my work since 2006 has been the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, where, for over 23 years, the US has, outrageously, been holding men either indefinitely without charge or trial, or, in a handful of cases, facing charges in a broken trial system, the military commissions. My focus on Guantánamo began with 14 months of relentless research and writing, for my book The Guantánamo Files, and has continued ever since with over 2,600 articles about Guantánamo that I have written and published here on my website. Since 2012, I’ve also been running the Close Guantánamo website, and I continue to spearhead monthly global vigils for Guantánamo’s closure, and a photo campaign every 100 days.
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.
Photos and Report: The Ongoing Relevance of the Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure, May 7, 2025
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.
On Wednesday May 7, for the 28th successive month, a global family of dedicated campaigners held vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay at nine locations across the US and around the world — Washington, D.C., London, New York, San Francisco, Brussels, Mexico City, Detroit, Los Angeles, and Portland, OR — with Cobleskill, NY holding an additional vigil on Saturday May 10.
I’m immensely proud of, and grateful for the dedication of our global family of campaigners — from various Amnesty International groups, and representatives of other groups including the Close Guantánamo campaign, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait and the UK Guantánamo Network — for continuing to shine a light on the lawlessness of Guantánamo, in the face of widespread amnesia or indifference.
This month’s London vigil, in particular, was noteworthy, as campaigners with the UK Guantánamo Network, who have been working assiduously with MPs and peers to reestablish an All-Party Parliamentary Group for Guantánamo’s closure, invited members of the APPG to show support by visiting the vigil for a photo opportunity, and five MPs and peers took a break from their busy schedules to join us — Chris Law of the SNP, the chair of the APPG, Baroness Natalie Bennett of the Green Party, John McDonnell and Andy Slaughter of the Labour Party, and Brian Mathew, a Liberal Democrat.
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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
