Photos and Report: The Ongoing Relevance of the Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure, May 7, 2025
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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.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
