US To Transfer 9,000 Migrants To Guantanamo Bay In Major Immigration Policy Shift: Report

Controversial move signals hardline approach as capacity at Camp Delta set to expand dramatically…

At least 9,000 migrants are currently being vetted and prepared for transfer to Guantanamo Bay, potentially as early as this week, marking a dramatic escalation from the roughly 500 detained at the facility since February. The expansion reflects what observers are calling an exponential increase and leverages Guantanamo’s legacy as a detention site for terrorism suspects to broadcast an uncompromising stance on illegal immigration.

The Trump administration argues the surge in transfers is necessary to ease overcrowding at detention centers on the U.S. mainland. But critics say the move is more about optics than logistics — and that using Guantanamo, long a symbol of human rights controversy, sends an unmistakable message. (RELATED: Left-Wing Celebrity Deported Over Standoff With Authorities)

Coincidentally, on this day in 1898, U.S. Marines captured Guantanamo Bay. In 1903, Washington signed an open-ended lease for the strategically important harbor. Since 1959, Havana’s communist government has protested the presence of U.S. troops on Cuban soil.

As POLITICO reports:

The discussions come as the White House presses Immigration and Customs Enforcement for higher arrest numbers, with senior policy adviser Stephen Miller calling for 3,000 arrests a day. The agency is also tight on detention space and pushing for funding from Congress to hire more agents and expand domestic detention capacity.

Some 800 Europeans — including one Austrian, 100 Romanians and 170 Russians — are being considered for the transfers, according to one of the documents. That element of the plan has alarmed some U.S. diplomats, who note that most European countries are American allies that are cooperative in taking back deportees and that there’s no need to send the people to Guantanamo.

State Department officials who deal with Europe are trying to persuade DHS to abandon the plan.

“The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people,” one State Department official familiar with the situation said of the Guantanamo plan. “But we’re allies.” The person was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

The fiscal burden of detaining migrants at Guantanamo is also under the microscope. The cost of housing a single detainee at the site runs as high as $100,000 per day, driven largely by its remote location, specialized staffing needs, and complex security protocols.

For 9,000 detainees, that amounts to nearly $1 billion per day — a figure critics would likely seize on amid ongoing budget debates in Congress.

As legal challenges arise, diplomatic tensions simmer, and logistical questions mount, the political stakes continue to rise. Whether this move stands as a new enforcement paradigm or collapses under legal and operational scrutiny will depend on what happens in the days ahead — not just in courtrooms, but in the eyes of the public, allies, and the 9,000 migrants now at the heart of the storm.

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