Southwest Border Mission has cost $ 330 million so far – with more than $ 40 million for Guantanamo Bay: Sources
The southern border mission and detention operations in Guantanamo Bay cost nearly $ 330 million in mid-March, according to a familiar US official with the informed information in Congress, while President Donald Trump is trying to carry out his campaign promise to repress illegal immigration to the United States.
Expulsion flights and detention operations in Guantanamo Bay, who contained only a few hundred detainees at its peak, cost nearly $ 40 million in this total.
There are only a few dozen deported migrants who are currently held in Guantanamo Bay.
The estimated costs of border operations and Guantanamo Bay have not been reported before.
A photo published by the Ministry of Internal Security of the first flight of migrants which was part of Tren of Aragua, preparing for takeoff for Guantanamo Bay, on February 4, 2025.
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The costs of exploitation of the southwest borders should continue to increase now that additional active forces have continued to move to the border, where there are now more than 10,000 troops in active service as part of the mission on the border with Mexico.
Additional costs will probably include those associated with the new deployments of two American navy destroyers to this mission.
As of March 12, 2025, the military services provided a total of $ 328.5 million to support the border mission, including expulsion flights and border deployments, according to a familiar US official with informed information at Congress. Of this total, $ 289.2 million concerned border security operations and $ 39.3 million were intended for the operations of Guantanamo Bay.
The cost in Guantanamo Bay is extremely high since the only hundreds of detainees were sent there – even if Trump had said that tent cities could contain up to 30,000 deported migrants.
“There is a lot of space to welcome a lot of people,” said Trump using Guantanamo bay to host migrants on February 4 after signing a executive decree To send migrants on January 29. “So we’re going to use it. … I would like to get them out. Everything would be subject to the laws of our land, and we look at this to see if we can.”
An armored vehicle of the eight attackers stands out next to a panel that can be read within the Spanish limits of the United States of Mexico, “patrolling the border area of Sunland Park, New Mexico, like March 28, 2025.
Herika Martinez / AFP via Getty Images
Detainees with judicial lockers were accommodated at the detention center that had been used to house enemies of the war against terrorism, and others were placed at the migrant operations center which could only house 50 migrants.
Plans have asked a tent town adjacent to this installation of migrants which could house the figures mentioned by Trump and other senior administration officials.
However, operations did not get closer to this, because progressive construction initially envisaged construction tents for 2,500 people – but only 195 tents capable of accommodating 500 people were built. And they were not used at all because they did not encounter us the standards of immigration and customs detention, such as the inclusion of air conditioning.
On Friday, a delegation of Senate democrats visited migrant detention operations in Guantanamo Bay and then criticized what they called “the scale and waste of the abusive use by the Trump administration of our soldiers”.
“The amazing financial cost to get these immigrants out of the United States and have them in Guantanamo Bay – a mission worth tens of millions of dollars a month – is an insult to American taxpayers,” said a statement.
“President Trump could implement his immigration policies for a fraction of the cost by using existing ice facilities in the United States, but he is obsessed with the image of the use of Guantanamo, regardless of the cost,” he added.
Members of the American army stabilize near the border wall separating Mexico and the United States, in San Diego, California, on March 21, 2025.
Mike Blake / Reuters
Ice has its own fleet of chartered aircraft which are used for expulsion flights which cost about $ 8,577 per hour, according to its website. On the other hand, the flights to Guantanamo bay were made on the C-1330J and the C-17.
The American transport command said that it costs $ 20,000 per hour of flight for C-130J and $ 28,500 per hour of flight for C-17-and a one-way guestanamo from El Paso, Texas, is around 4 1/2 hours on a C-17 and six hours on a C-130J, allowing costs to be accompanied quickly.
They Transportation Command also made expulsion flights to Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, India and Panama. Friday, the most recent military flight took place, when a military expulsion flight landed in Guatemala.
ABC News reported last week that 21 migrants expelled had been sent to Guantanamo Bay aboard a civilian flight coordinated by Ice, the first detainees to arrive there since the anterior ablation of the 41 detainees in Guantanamo Bay in a detention center in Louisiana.
At the end of February, the 178 detainees of Guantanamo bay at the time were transported by plane, 176 returning to their country of origin in Venezuela and two others returned to the United States.
