The southwestern border mission and the detention operations at Guantanamo Bay have price near $330 million by means of mid-March, based on a U.S. official aware of info briefed to Congress, as President Donald Trump makes an attempt to meet his marketing campaign promise to crack down on unlawful immigration in the USA.
The deportation flights and detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, which solely held a couple of hundred detainees at its peak, have price practically $40 million of that whole.
There are solely a few dozen deported migrants at the moment being held at Guantanamo Bay.
The estimated prices of the operations on the border and at Guantanamo Bay haven’t been beforehand reported.
A photograph launched by the Division of Homeland Safety of the primary flight of migrants who have been a part of Tren de Aragua, making ready to takeoff for Guantanamo Bay, Feb. 4, 2025.
DHS
The prices of the southwestern border operation are anticipated to proceed to rise now that further active-duty forces have continued to maneuver to the border, the place there at the moment are greater than 10,000 lively obligation troops as a part of the mission on the border with Mexico.
Extra prices will seemingly embody these related to the brand new deployments of two U.S. Navy destroyers to that mission.
As of March 12, 2025, the navy providers had supplied a complete of $328.5 million in assist for the border mission, together with deportation flights and deployments to the border, based on a U.S. official aware of the data briefed to Congress. Of that whole, $289.2 million was for border safety operations and $39.3 million was for the operations at Guantanamo Bay.
The associated fee at Guantanamo Bay is extraordinarily excessive given the one a number of hundred detainees have been despatched there — despite the fact that Trump had mentioned tent cities there may hold as many as 30,000 deported migrants.
“There’s plenty of area to accommodate lots of people,” Trump mentioned of utilizing Guantanamo Bay to accommodate migrants on Feb. 4 after he signed an executive order to ship migrants there on Jan. 29. “So we will use it. … I would wish to get them out. It could be all topic to the legal guidelines of our land, and we’re taking a look at that to see if we will.”
An eight-wheeled Strikers armored automobile stands guard subsequent to an indication that reads in Spanish ‘United States of Mexico limits,’ patrolling the border space in Sunland Park, New Mexico, as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua state, Mexico, on March 28, 2025.
Herika Martinez/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Detainees with prison information have been housed on the detention facility that had been used to accommodate enemy combatants from the Warfare on Terror, and others have been positioned on the Migrant Operations Middle that might solely home 50 migrants.
Plans referred to as for a tent metropolis adjoining that migrant facility to be constructed that might home the numbers talked about by Trump and different senior administration officers.
Nonetheless, operations have come nowhere near that because the phased development initially envisioned constructing tent services for two,500 individuals — however solely 195 tents able to housing 500 individuals have been constructed. And so they haven’t been used in any respect as a result of they did not meet U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention requirements, comparable to together with air con.
On Friday, a delegation of Senate Democrats visited the migrant detention operations at Guantanamo Bay and later criticized what they referred to as the “scale and wastefulness of the Trump Administration’s misuse of our navy.”
“The staggering monetary price to fly these immigrants out of the USA and detain them at Guantanamo Bay — a mission value tens of tens of millions of {dollars} a month — is an insult to American taxpayers,” Democrats on the Senate Armed Providers Committee, who sponsored the go to, mentioned in an announcement.
“President Trump may implement his immigration insurance policies for a fraction of the fee through the use of present ICE services within the U.S., however he’s obsessive about the picture of utilizing Guantanamo, irrespective of the fee,” it added.
Members of the U.S. Navy stand close to the border wall separating Mexico and the USA, in San Diego, Calif., March 21, 2025.
Mike Blake/Reuters
ICE has its personal fleet of chartered plane which can be used for deportation flights that price about $8,577 an hour, based on its web site. In distinction, the flights to Guantanamo Bay have been performed on C-130Js and C-17s.
The U.S. Transportation Command mentioned it prices $20,000 per flight hour for C-130Js and $28,500 per flight hour for C-17s — and a one-way flight Guantanamo from El Paso, Texas is about 4 1/2 hours on a C-17 and 6 hours on a C-130J, permitting prices so as to add up shortly.
U.S. Transportation Command has additionally carried out deportation flights to Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, India and Panama. The latest navy flight occurred on Friday, when a navy deportation flight landed in Guatemala.
ABC Information reported final week that 21 deported migrants had been despatched to Guantanamo Bay aboard a civilian flight coordinated by ICE, the primary detainees to reach there for the reason that earlier removing of all 41 detainees at Guantanamo Bay to a detention center in Louisiana.
In late February, the 178 detainees at Guantanamo Bay at the moment have been flown out, with 176 returning to their house nation of Venezuela and two others returned to the USA.
