President Trump Orders Guantanamo Bay Expansion to ‘Full Capacity’

On January 29, 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum to the Secretaries of Defense and Homeland Security “to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.” The memo states that this action is necessary “to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”

President Trump indicated that some migrants would be sent there indefinitely rather than being deported to their home countries: “We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them to Guantanamo.”