Guantanamo Bay has always been shorthand for disappearing people. It’s a place where people cease to exist, along with any rights they may have been afforded if they’d been imprisoned inside the United States. Its name is synonymous with torture and indefinite detention. And the excuse has always been the same: it’s impossible to secure the nation without becoming just like our enemies.
What’s happening now is far more terrifying. It’s no longer just a dumping ground for suspected terrorists. As this report from Mother Jones explains, it’s now just another place to dump deportees in hopes of denying them anything resembling due process. This isn’t exactly new, as Amanda Moore’s report points out:
For years, ICE has operated its own, separate facility at Guantanamo called the Migrant Operations Center, which, according to a 2024 report by the International Refugee Assistance Project, was used to confine refugees apprehended at sea in “prison-like conditions.”
What is new is Trump’s actions during his second term. He ordered the Pentagon to “expand” its detention operations to handle an expected influx of migrants, merging ICE’s operations with the military’s Gitmo detention center.
What’s also new is who the administration has decided to send to this migrant-focused joint Gitmo operation. It’s exactly the sort of people you’d expect Trump to want to be treated the worst: Somalis. Trump has frequently referred to Somalia as a “shithole country.” And the large Somali population in Minneapolis, Minnesota became the instant focus of Trump’s anti-blue state surge efforts in that state.
Late last month, ICE put 12 Somali men on a plane and told them they were being deported to Somalia, according to interviews with community leaders, friends, and family members who are in touch with the detainees. Instead, they arrived at the notorious US military base in Cuba, where seven or eight of them remain. Since then, the men have said, they have been subjected to frigid temperatures, and they are shackled at all times.
It hasn’t been a complete disappearance of these Somali men, although I imagine the administration would have preferred none of them were ever heard from again. The detainees have been given some phone call privileges, which is likely the only reason anyone outside of the administration is aware that this is happening.
Given the history of the Gitmo facility, you might assume the people being sent there now are somehow more dangerous than the thousands of migrants with no criminal records being arrested by ICE officers. Certainly, the DHS would prefer you to believe this:
In an email, a DHS spokesperson claimed that the Somalis flown to Guantanamo in late August “included some of the worst of the worst, with criminal histories including aggravated assaults, weapons offenses, robbery, multiple larcenies, police obstruction, possession of burglary tools, receiving stolen property, trespassing, unauthorized use of a vehicle, multiple drug charges, and DUIs.”
Ah, the “worst of the worst.” Of course. That old thing. And the statement goes on to claim everyone sent to Gitmo after being told they were being deported to their homeland was given “due process” and were subject to final orders of removal.
But the pretense doesn’t hold up because it never does. While Mother Jones can’t speak for all of the people sent to Gitmo, it’s safe to believe this has more to do with them being Somali than it has to do with them being criminals so dangerous they needed to be removed from the country (but still held in US territory) until… whatever ICE decides to do with them next.
It’s far more likely that none of these people have ever been accused, much less convicted, of committing a violent crime.
At least some of the detainees have told people they have spoken to that they are not criminals and have not been charged with crimes. MPR reported last week that one of the men, Adam Abdullah, had received two parking tickets but had no criminal record. Several of the men at Guantanamo were applying for asylum and had work authorization…
That’s just what’s been discovered by other reporting. Moore’s investigative work for Mother Jones did not come across any criminal records for two other Gitmo detainees who arrived on the same supposed deportation flight. Assuming the worst, at best maybe half of the seven or eight remaining detainees had some sort of criminal record. This could, of course, all be cleared up by the DHS releasing criminal records pertaining to the Somalis sent to Gitmo. But it hasn’t, which is extremely telling, since ICE and DHS officials are always posting stuff to Facebook and X about arrestees if they can find any dirt at all on someone now in ICE custody.
The Trump administration still has a couple of years to go before it runs out of Trump. This is a leading indicator, rather than the belated accounting of a temporary effort the administration no longer considers viable. The faster the moves and the further the distance, the less likely it is that detainees can make their case in court. This robs them of jurisdiction and the distance makes it all but impossible to make personal appearances in court. It also allows the government to pretend the burdens of returning detainees to the US outweighs whatever harms courts declare to be supportive of ongoing litigation.
The administration can’t win without cheating. A nearly unanimous majority of court decisions have sided with migrants and their due process rights. In response to the legal reality, we should expect the administration to do more of this: the “disappearance” of migrants to off-shore detention centers before their cases can be heard.