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U.S. Department of Homeland Security Detainees prepare to board the first U.S. military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Feb. 4.
The Washington Post
11:39 JST, February 21, 2025
Venezuelan migrants who had been detained at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Station have been flown to Honduras and will be transferred next to Venezuela, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said Thursday.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told The Washington Post that the 177 Venezuelan migrants being deported represent the “worst of the worst.”
More than three weeks have passed since the first flight of migrants from the United States to Guantánamo on Feb. 4. The unprecedented move to send migrants to the naval base by the Trump administration began as U.S.-based immigration detention facilities were filling up and the administration attempted to fulfill its promise to launch the largest deportation operation in U.S. history.
A Post investigation into six migrants found that only one of them had a criminal record. None of those six appeared to have connections to the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, based on a search of records and interviews with migrants’ family members.
Enrique Reina, the secretary of foreign relations for Honduras, characterized the effort as a joint operation among the United States, Venezuela and Honduras, showing photos of two planes that were transporting the migrants on X. Reina did not make clear in his statement that the migrants were coming from Guantánamo.
“We are and we will keep working together,” said Javier Bu Soto, the Honduran ambassador to the United States, on X, adding the hashtag “diplomacy works” to Reina’s announcement.
Migrants were being held in Guantánamo in two separate parts of the base. As of Thursday morning, there were 126 migrants held in the military’s Camp 6 who were considered “high threat,” according to the government’s recent court filing in a lawsuit. McLaughlin said 80 of them had a Tren de Aragua affiliation.
That detention space has historically held suspected terrorists.
Fifty-one of the migrants – or nearly one third of the total migrant population there – were considered “non-criminals” by the administration and were held in the Migrant Operations Center, which has held small numbers of migrants intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard.
