The Trump administration on Thursday transferred all of the Venezuelan migrants it had brought to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, suddenly emptying a detention operation that it had just as abruptly started this month.
Two passenger planes operated by Global X, a charter aircraft company, flew to the naval base on Thursday morning and shuttled most of the migrants to an airfield in Honduras. They were to then be put aboard a Venezuelan plane for repatriation.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said 177 migrants had been transferred to Venezuelan custody, and one had been brought back to an immigration facility in the United States. In a declaration filed in court earlier on Thursday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had said 178 Venezuelans were at the base.
It was unclear whether the administration intended to send additional migrants to the base.
The transfers cleared out the migrants at a time when the operation has raised numerous questions about whether the government had legitimate legal authority to take people from ICE facilities in the United States to the base in Cuba for continued detention. Immigrant rights’ lawyers have gone to court seeking access to the migrants, and rights groups have been expected to file a broader challenge to the Trump administration’s policy.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Albert Sun from New York.
