US's Pentagon says 10 ‘high-threat’ migrants are being held at Guantanamo Bay

The Pentagon said Wednesday that 10 undocumented migrants have been transported to its detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the latest effort by the Trump administration to demonstrate its aggressive use of the military to enforce immigration restrictions.

The announcement follows Trump’s order last week to the Defense and Homeland Security departments to expand detention capacity at the naval station, with the aim of ultimately being able to hold as many as 30,000 people. 

Fewer than 20 migrants, which the administration has deemed to be "high threat," are being transported on the first C-17 flight from Fort Bliss, one defense official said, speaking to VOA on background, a method often used by U.S. officials to remain anonymous, before the flight landed in Cuba.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Tuesday posted photos on X of some of the migrants as they prepared to board the military cargo plane, calling them “the worst of the worst,” and warning the effort to deport them is just getting started.

The Department of Homeland Security later said all of the migrants on the military flight from Texas to Guantanamo Bay were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang with transnational reach. Officials did not say when or how they were first taken into custody.

The White House has announced plans to designate Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

"The number of service members will continue to fluctuate as additional forces are tasked to deploy and will be scaled, based on the requirements of the Department of Homeland Security, which is the lead federal agency," U.S. Southern Command, which overseas operations in South America, Central America and the Caribbean, announced in a statement on Monday.

The migrants who arrived Tuesday will be held at the U.S. detention facility, according to a U.S. official who spoke on background. The facility is known mostly for housing military prisoners and terror suspects, including those involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks and members of the Taliban.

"If you're a violent gang banger, and you've been taken out of our country, and we're waiting to bring you to your country, we're going to put you in a cell box built for al-Qaida," Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Fox News this week.

In his executive order last month, Trump instructed the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare the U.S. naval base to hold up to 30,000 migrants.

"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 out to Guantanamo," Trump said.

The Guantanamo Bay prison, established following the September 11, 2001 attacks, has been used to hold detainees captured during the wars and other operations that followed. The conditions at the facility have sparked widespread condemnation from rights groups, and UN experts have labelled it a site of "unparalleled notoriety."