Trump Administration Deports Migrants to Venezuela, Almost Emptying Out Guantanamo

President Donald Trump promised to detain undocumented migrants at Guantanamo Bay as his efforts to crack down unauthorized migration continue. In that context, dozens of Venezuelan migrants who were housed in the detention camp were sent back to their home country in a series of flights that forged an unprecedented pathway for U.S. deportations.

A plane carrying 177 Venezuelan migrants arrived in Venezuela on Thursday, nearly emptying the naval base of the migrants who were sent there after Trump's inauguration. The deportations relied on a stopover in Honduras.

The government of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro said it had "requested the repatriation of a group" of Venezuelans "who were unjustly taken" to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. With the request accepted, an aircraft with the state-owned airline Conviasa picked up the migrants from the Central American country.

Honduras' foreign ministry announced that the country had accepted a flight with 174 Venezuelan migrants from the U.S., but would be immediately removed and sent back to South America. The official said the varying numbers between the two countries could be merely a discrepancy.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has alleged that Venezuelan migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay have ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, a criminal network that started in a Venezuelan prison, NBC News reports.

However, Maduro's government disagreed with those claims, saying the group that arrived this week "are not criminals, they are not bad people, they were people who emigrated as a result of [US] sanctions... in Venezuela we welcome them as a productive force, with a loving embrace."

Of the deportees, 126 people had criminal charges or convictions— including 80 allegedly affiliated with Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua— a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. They added that 51 had no criminal record.

The recent flight is the latest in what seems to be a rekindling relationship between the two countries based on migration-related agreements. Last week, two Venezuelan flights carried 190 immigrants directly from the U.S. to Venezuela.

Trump said in January he planned to expand immigration detention facilities at Guantanamo to hold as many as 30,000 people, although the current capacity is around 2,500. The administration has also said they reserve the detention camp to "the worst of the worst."

The naval base is best known for housing suspects taken in after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but it also has been used for holding people caught trying to illegally reach the U.S. by boat and to coordinate the resettlement of immigrants in the U.S., The Associated Press reports.

The Thursday flight comes amid a court filing in which immigrant rights' groups sued the Trump administration to have in-person access to detainees and 72 hours notice before planes carrying migrants to or away from Guantanamo took off. They also argued the government was affording them "very limited due process rights."

A U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., has directed authorities to provide phone access to legal counsel, and authorities at Guantanamo said in Thursday's court filing that they have complied, while pushing back against other demands including communication between detainees and relatives.