President Donald Trump promised loyalists that he’d send the world’s “worst criminal aliens” to Guantánamo Bay. But not all of them fit the label.
One of the recent detainees was arrested for biking on the wrong side of the road.
In February, the Trump administration flew nearly 180 migrants to Guantánamo. They were held there for weeks before all were deported to Venezuela on Thursday.
While members of the Trump administration have characterized the detainees as dangerous criminals, Miami Herald journalists Claire Healy and Syra Ortiz Blanes reported that some migrants were detained for minor misdeeds—or none at all. One was arrested for shoplifting at Target. One was seized after crossing the Rio Grande on foot. Another was only 19.
Many of the people Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the “worst of the worst” only had one violation on record: crossing the border. Several were detained while seeking asylum or legal entry during appointments with border authorities.
Noem, who accused some migrants of being “child pedophiles,” isn’t the only member of the Trump administration on the offense. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that migrants were “raping” and “murdering” innocent women. Of everyone Healy and Ortiz spoke with, only two were felons: One was convicted of illegal reentry while the other was found guilty of conspiring to transport other migrants.
On Sunday, the administration transported 17 additional individuals to Guantánamo. While hundreds of detainees—including a 14-year-old boy—have been held there since it opened in 2002, only eight men have ever been convicted. Four of those convictions were later reversed. In total, nine men have died while imprisoned at the complex.
The military prison’s history of torture stretches back decades and throughout different administrations. The Washington Post has revealed that migrants face horrific conditions while there, and in the last several years, many were placed in solitary confinement without windows and only permitted to leave twice in a two-week period. One migrant was there for four years and only let outside twice, shackled and put in a small cage. He barely saw the sky before he was thrown back into his cell. He was prohibited from calling his loved ones.
“They didn’t treat me like a human being,” he told the Post.
Some detainees tried to commit suicide with whatever they could find.
When Leavitt was asked about the Post story Tuesday, she dismissed reporters' concerns, simply claiming, “These are criminals.”
Trump’s mass deportation agenda also ruined the life of 21-year-old Yoiner Jose Purroy Roldon, who was recently deported to Venezuela. He told reporters that he came to America seeking a better life for his family.
“But the truth is that they took many things from us, treating us like criminals,” he said. All he could do was pray to God, and he started a hunger strike to protest the detention camp’s conditions—not impossible when he was already eating meals that “didn’t fill even half” of his stomach. He dropped 20 pounds in two weeks.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has regularly advocated for immigrant rights, said Guantánamo Bay was originally intended to be an “island outside the law” where suspects were interrogated without due process or access to lawyers.
It costs taxpayers nearly $450 million per year to keep the prison going. But Trump wants to ramp up its usage, saying that as many as 30,000 migrants could be forced into Guantánamo in the near future.
