All Migrants Moved Out of Guantanamo

The Trump administration has apparently emptied Guantanamo Bay of migrants, weeks after President Trump issued an order for a detention facility at the base to be expanded to hold up to 30,000 people. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said Thursday that 177 migrants had been transferred to Venezuelan custody and another had been returned to a facility in the US, the New York Times reports. Earlier Thursday, officials responding to a lawsuit from rights groups including the ACLU said 178 migrants, all Venezuelans, were at the base.

The Venezuelans were transferred to Venezuelan custody via an air base in Honduras where there has long been a US presence. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's office said it had requested the repatriation of a group of migrants "who were unjustly taken" to Guantanamo Bay, the AP reports.

• A senior DHS official tells NBC News that the administration plans to keep using the base as a "staging area," though sources say DHS is looking at using other sites, including Fort Bliss in Texas.
• In its response to the lawsuit, the government revealed that 127 people were held at Guantanamo's Camp IV, previously used to hold terror suspects, with another 51 held at the base's Migrant Operations Center.

• The administration previously said the base would hold "the worst of the worst," including members of the Tren de Aragua, though congressional staff members said Wednesday that any Venezuelan with a final removal order could be sent there, the Times reports. Relatives of some people sent there said their family members had no criminal records or gang connections.
• Asked by ABC News about the ACLU's complaint that migrants had been held there "incommunicado," with no access to family or lawyers, a senior DHS official said: "If the AMERICAN Civil Liberties Union cares more about highly dangerous criminal aliens including murderers & vicious gang members than they do about American citizens—they should change their name."
• Earlier this week, officials said the migrants had "limited rights," but three men at the base had been allowed to call lawyers and "preliminary access procedures have been developed for others at the facility," the Times reports. "The government saying we can now have access to the detainees only after they have moved them is perplexing, at best," says ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.

(More Guantanamo Bay stories.)