Trump Abandons His Guantánamo Migrant Plan
On Thursday, all 178 migrants flown to Guantánamo since Feb 4 — including 127 illegally placed in the “war on terror” prison — were repatriated (and with one sent back to the US).
Via my brand-new article on my website, Victory for US Law as Trump Abruptly Empties Guantánamo of All the Migrants He Just Sent There, I celebrate the welcome news that Donald Trump’s use of Guantánamo to hold Venezuelan migrants as part of his cynical and cruel “war on migrants” seems to have come to an abrupt end, less than a month since it was first announced.
On Thursday, 178 men were held in total — 51 in the existing Migrant Operations Center, established in the 1990s to hold migrants intercepted at sea, and 127 in Camp 6 of the “war on terror” prison.
While the legality of the entire enterprise was extremely dubious, the use of Camp 6 was glaringly illegal, as the legislation establishing the prison’s existence in January 2002 (the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force) only ever justified its use for those seized in connection with Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces, with specific reference to the 9/11 attacks.
On Thursday, after a court hearing in response to a challenge by rights groups including the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, all but one of these men were flown back to Venezuela via Honduras, with the remaining man flown back to detention on the US mainland.
It is to be hoped that this is the end of this particularly malign and lawless project, and that it was meant to be an act of “performative cruelty” on Trump’s part to appeal to his base, but it is, sadly, all too typical of an administration that, on as many fronts as possible, is intent on pushing a narrative that the president should be able to do whatever he wants, unrestrained by any of the checks and balances on presidential power that are part of the Constitution.
A recent podcast interview about Trump, Guantánamo, Gaza and UK politics
Every month or so, I discuss the state of the world with Andy Bungay, who runs a late-night weekend show on Riverside Radio, a community radio station in south London. Our latest interview, in which, of course, we spent time discussing Donald Trump, before moving on to UK politics, is here, and I hope that you’ll check it out if you have any time to spare.
And finally, some music
Also new is the latest live video from my band The Four Fathers’ album launch before Christmas, this one featuring our guitarist Richard Clare’s song ‘When You’re Gone.’ Stay tuned for another live video next week!
Dispiriting news via the New York Times, which reports that 15 new migrants arrived at Guantánamo from Texas yesterday evening. The nationalities of the men were not disclosed, but according to the Times, "a government official said they were in the category of 'high-threat illegal aliens,' and therefore were being held in Camp 6, a prison that until last month housed detainees in the war on terrorism."
I genuinely didn’t expect migrant flights to resume so quickly after all of the 178 men transferred so far were removed on Thursday — all but one repatriated to Venezuela — and I especially didn’t think that Trump would continue using Camp 6 of the "war on terror" prison, when, as has been repeatedly established via rights groups, and via my own research and reporting, this is blatantly illegal, because the prison, by law, can only be used to hold individuals allegedly connected to Al-Qaeda, the Taliban or associated forces, in relation to the 9/11 attacks and other acts of related international terrorism.
I’m hoping we’ll hear soon about a legal challenge addressing the Trump administration’s particularly blatant contempt for the rules regarding who can — and can’t — be held in the "war on terror" prison. Over the years, all previous efforts to send new categories of "unpeople" to Guantánamo have been rebuffed, because, to do so, Congress would need to pass new legislation to authorize their imprisonment. It happened, noticeably, with various efforts over the years to suggest that ISIS members should be held there, none of which ever materialized.
For Trump and his administration — via the DHS, and the DoD in particular — to so disdainfully disregard the lack of Congressional authorization for holding migrants in the military prison, and to double down on doing so via yesterday’s flight, needs to be explicitly challenged as swiftly as possible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/23/us/politics/trump-migrants-guantanamo-bay.html
Thank you Andy for your reporting on this. And to CCR and ACLU.