With the arrival of the first migrant detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the shadowy depths of America’s immigration detention system just grew even darker.
Very little is known about the men, at least some of whom are being guarded by U.S. troops and held in the same military detention facility as terrorism suspects. Journalists, lawyers, and rights groups already struggle to access information about immigration detention in the U.S. and the people held therein—sending deportees to Gitmo takes this opacity to a new and disturbing level.
Recently, the first independent images emerged from the migrant operation at Gitmo, including photos of a rising tent city, but only because a New York Times reporter was apparently invited to travel there with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.
As with other raids, border operations, and deportations, President Trump’s administration is hyping the deportation of migrants to Gitmo by posting its own curated images on X and claiming the deportees are dangerous criminals. But when it comes to independent access for the press, it’s a different story. Most journalists have simply been shut out.
Extreme secrecy is, unfortunately, commonplace for Gitmo. Since the U.S. began holding prisoners at a military detention facility there in 2002, members of the media have been granted only limited, tightly-controlled access, if they’re allowed in at all. Journalists have been told what they can and can’t report, down to what they can write in their notebooks. They’ve been forbidden from interviewing detainees (even when prisoners wanted to speak to the press), from writing about information that’s already public, and from taking certain pictures.
Gleaning information outside of visits is also difficult. The military can choose what information to disclose and stop providing it when it could embarrass the U.S. Journalists describe using FOIA requests to obtain records from Gitmo as a “bureaucratic nightmare.”
Beyond the men currently being detained in military facilities, the Trump administration reportedly plans to house large numbers of migrants in Gitmo’s Migration Operations Center, or MOC. Although this isn’t the first time the government has housed non-citizen migrants there, it is the first time deportees are being sent there from the U.S.—and in either context, most people have never heard of it.
That’s because the MOC has been “quasi-hidden” from the public. According to a report released last year by the International Refugee Assistance Project, the MOC has historically operated “with little to no transparency or accountability.” For instance, although Congress requires public inspection reports or audits of ICE detention facilities, none are available for the MOC. That’s also in conflict with ICE’s own standards, which dictate that journalists, lawyers, and NGOs should be able to visit and interview detainees, and that detainees should have access to telephones and the mail so they can communicate with family, legal counsel and the outside world.
In response to the lawsuit by rights groups and family members, a DHS spokesperson claimed that there is “a system for phone utilization” at Guantanamo Bay. But family members say they’ve been unable to reach individuals shown in government pictures of deportees to Gitmo, and ICE has reportedly not allowed any attorney visits or contact with the migrants held there so far.
Lawyers’ lack of access to the deportees not only affects their legal rights; it also deprives the public of access to information. During the first Trump administration, many of the earliest news reports on the horrific conditions in which migrant children were being detained were based on information from lawyers who visited facilities or received leaks of damning documentation.
Of course, ICE often ignores its own rules. The agency has often shut out the press and made it prohibitively expensive or impossible for detainees to communicate to the outside world. The private prisons that make up the vast majority of ICE facilities try to evade public record laws.
None of this has stopped journalists and advocates from reporting disturbing information about deaths, sexual abuse, and overcrowding at other immigration detention facilities, as they are now attempting to do at Gitmo. The Times, for instance, used satellite footage to shed light on the construction of an open-air tent camp where detainees may be held in the future. It also published a list of 53 men detained there, obtained from unnamed sources.
But that impressive reporting doesn’t change the fact that the government’s detentions at Gitmo are happening largely out of sight of the American people.
We shouldn’t have to rely on reporters’ tenacity and commitment to the fourth estate to gain basic information about what the government is up to. Sending deportees to Gitmo doesn’t just signal that the Trump administration is cracking down on immigration—it’s cracking down on the public’s right to know, too.
And in this case, like many others, what we don’t know can certainly hurt us. It hurts our freedoms too.
