WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration has launched a brazen new front in its crusade against undocumented immigrants: deportation flights to Guantánamo Bay, the notorious U.S. naval base in Cuba once synonymous with post-9/11 torture and indefinite detention. In a move ripped straight from the playbook of authoritarian spectacle, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declared Tuesday that at least two flights ferrying migrants to the offshore facility were already “under way”—a chilling escalation of Trump’s vow to unleash “the largest deportation effort in American history.”
“Not Messing Around”: Trump’s Gitmo Detention Scheme Goes Live
Leavitt, spewing fire on Fox Business Network, framed the flights as a crackdown on “illegal criminals” flooding the U.S. “President Trump is no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground,” she snarled, confirming reports from the Wall Street Journal and CNN that roughly 20 migrants—nationalities still murky—had been shipped from a Texas Army base to the Caribbean compound. The flights, shrouded in secrecy, follow Trump’s executive order last week greenlighting a dystopian expansion of Gitmo’s prison camps to hold up to 30,000 detainees.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust their countries to hold them,” Trump barked days earlier, painting migrants as ticking time bombs. “We’re sending them to Guantánamo.” Critics, however, see a grotesque rebranding of what Amnesty International once dubbed “America’s gulag,” now repurposed to warehouse civilians in a legal black hole.
El Salvador’s Bukele Plays Ball—But At What Cost?
The flights coincide with a surreal diplomatic twist: El Salvador’s authoritarian poster boy, President Nayib Bukele, volunteered to accept not just Salvadoran deportees but any undocumented migrants—even “incarcerated U.S. citizens.” The offer, sealed after a sit-down with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was hailed by the Florida hawk as “the most unprecedented migratory agreement ever.” Leavitt doubled down, claiming Venezuela and Colombia had also folded to Trump’s strong-arm tactics.
But immigration lawyers are sounding alarms. “This isn’t policy—it’s performance art,” fumed advocacy group RAICES, noting the glaring legal voids in deporting people to countries with no ties to them. Rubio, when pressed on constitutionality, waffled: “We’ll have to study it.”
Gitmo’s Dark Legacy Looms Large
Guantánamo’s new chapter as a migrant depot revives its darkest lore. Since 2002, the base has warehoused Muslim men—many tortured, none convicted—as “enemy combatants.” Now, Trump aims to stuff its cells with asylum-seekers and visa overstayers, a move advocates call a blatant effort to dehumanize immigrants. “This isn’t about security; it’s about cruelty,” said Omar Shakir of Human Rights Watch.
The base’s current capacity? A mere 120. Trump’s fantasy of cramming in 30,000 would demand a prison sprawl rivaling dystopian fiction—a logistics nightmare, but a propaganda win for a president hellbent on painting migrants as invaders.
Legal Nightmares and a “Constitutional Crisis”
As ICE and Homeland Security stonewall questions, legal challenges loom. Sending non-citizens to third countries without due process could shred international law, while detaining them at Gitmo—where constitutional rights vanish—sets a terrifying precedent. “This is a constitutional crisis in the making,” warned ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt.
Yet for Trump, the calculus is clear: With El Salvador’s Bukele as a willing pawn and Rubio cheering from the sidelines, the administration is testing how far it can bend—or break—the rules before November.
The Bottom Line: Fear as a Campaign Strategy
Trump’s Gitmo gambit is less about policy than raw political theater—a midterm rallying cry for his base, steeped in nativist fearmongering. But for those caught in the crosshairs, the stakes are life and death. As the first flights touch down in Cuba, one truth echoes: In Trump’s America, the war on immigrants has entered its most lawless chapter yet.
