The first military plane carrying migrants previously living in the U.S. without legal permission has touched down at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as part of the Trump administration’s plan to imprison people accused of entering the U.S. illegally.
Thursday, February 6, 2025 12:43AM
Legal challenges loom over migrants flown to the prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba per President Donald Trump.
CHICAGO (WLS) — The first military plane carrying migrants previously living in the U.S. without legal permission has touched down at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as part of the Trump administration’s plan to imprison people accused of entering the U.S. illegally.
But, as the wheels touch down on the prison’s air strip, legal questions loom surrounding whether shipping people to the controversial island prison is legal.
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Cuffed and shackled, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media photos of 10 migrants, deplaned and tightly guarded, Tuesday night at Naval Station Guantanamo.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem celebrated the moment, writing, “President Trump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That starts today.”
With the touchdown of the first Cuba-bound military deportation flight, the Trump administration opened a fresh chapter of a prison long known for questionable, and some would say, hellish practices.
“The whole idea of Guantanamo is disgusting,” Chicago criminal defense attorney Thomas Durkin said.
Durkin was one of just five attorneys tapped to represent 9/11 attackers held at the prison.
Hearing the news that the president plans to use the prison as part of what he’s labeled the “largest deportation effort in history,” Durkin is shocked.
“It just makes a farce out of any concept that we abide by our rule of law in this country,” Durkin told the I-Team. “It’s incredibly discouraging that it’s 23 years later and it’s still open. It’s just impossible to believe that that could happen.”
The complex of the nearly shuttered prison is getting a quick renovation.
SEE MORE: 1st migrant flight lands at Guantanamo Bay, carrying ‘worst of the worst’
Satellite images from Planet Labs show the construction of large-scale tents across the Guantanamo Bay camp.
President Donald Trump was asked about Guantanamo Bay, and assured reporters it’s the place for some migrants to go.
“There’s a lot of space to accommodate a lot of people,” President Trump said. “We’re going to use it. We have it; it’s already up. We have it for nothing.”
The U.S. leases the land Guantanamo Bay prison is located on from Cuba.
A 2019 calculation of cost by the New York Times estimated the government spends more than half a billion dollars each year to operate Naval Station Guantanamo.
ABC 7 Chief Legal Analyst Gil Soffer said there are dozens of questions legally.
“The most obvious legal question is whether migrants who are arrested on United States soil can be transported to Guantanamo, detained there, and detained there, potentially indefinitely,” Soffer said. “That is the most obvious question.”
Soffer said the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay are entitled to habeas corpus, or due process in court, but that ruling did not address whether those same rights apply to migrants arrested on U.S. soil.
“In the nineties, it was used to house migrants who are interdicted at sea, from Asia, from Cuba,” Soffer explained. “It simply hasn’t been used, though, to house people who had been arrested here in the United States and sent there. That’s what’s new about all of this. That’s what raises new questions.”
Legal experts tell the I-Team it is highly likely that the legality of migrant detention at Guantanamo Bay will end up at some point before the Supreme Court.
So far, there is no word from the Department of Homeland Security on when more migrant arrives will be flown to the prison.
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The first military plane carrying migrants previously living in the U.S. without legal permission has touched down at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as part of the Trump administration’s plan to imprison people accused of entering the U.S. illegally.