PENTAGON — The top U.S. homeland security official was set to get a firsthand look at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, visiting the U.S. naval base in Cuba a day after sending a second flight of “high-threat illegal aliens” to be held there.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the trip Friday in a social media post on X, while sharing photos of detainees she described as “murderers & vicious gang members” being offloaded from a U.S. military transport jet before being taken to the prison facility.
In a separate post earlier Friday, Noem said the detainees were all Venezuelan gang members. She said one detainee had confessed to murder, while others were wanted for attempted murder, assault, weapons trafficking and impersonation.
DHS has not yet provided charging documents or other details regarding the crimes the detainees are accused of committing.
A U.S. official, speaking to VOA on the condition of anonymity to discuss the operation, said Thursday’s flight aboard a U.S. military C-130 cargo plane carried 13 “high-threat” individuals.
The first 10 undocumented migrants, described by U.S. officials as the “the worst of the worst,” arrived at the detention facility Tuesday, also on board a C-130. Officials have said all the migrants are being held under the watch of officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Homeland Security officials said the 10 migrants who arrived Tuesday 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.
U.S. defense officials have called the detention of the high-threat migrants at Guantanamo Bay detention facility a temporary measure.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday, though, emphasized the military’s commitment under President Donald Trump to secure the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
“We’ve seen an invasion,” Hegseth told a town hall meeting with Pentagon employees. “From people all around the world who I’m sure many of them want to seek a better life. I understand that.
“But we also don’t know who millions of them are, what their intentions are, why they’re here,” he said. “That creates a very real national security threat.”
Since Trump’s executive order last month, the Pentagon has deployed hundreds of Marines to Guantanamo to expand the facilities to support holding operations for undocumented immigrants.
That includes preparing the detention center, known mostly for housing military prisoners and terror suspects, including those involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks and members of the Taliban.
It also includes setting up tents and other facilities to house nonviolent migrants on another section of the base to prepare for as many as 30,000 migrants who will stay there until they can be deported to their countries of origin or other countries willing to take them.
Closing Guantanamo
Democratic administrations under former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden had sought to close the detention camp, which was built by the administration of former President George W. Bush in 2002, following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan that began shortly after the 9/11 attacks of 2001.
Human rights groups have criticized the Trump administration’s move to use Guantanamo as a holding center for migrants, with some warning it would amount to a human rights catastrophe.
At its height during the global war on terror, the detention facility held about 680 prisoners. As of Jan. 6, there were just 15 detainees at the facility, according to the Pentagon.
Before being used to detain terror suspects, the U.S. naval facility was also used to house migrants from Cuba and Haiti in the early 1990s.
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