The Trump administration has flown all or almost all of the migrants it had held in Guantanamo Bay out of the facility there and to Honduras, NBC News has learned from three sources familiar with the operation and flight data.
In a declaration in response to a lawsuit on Thursday, the Trump administration said there were 178 immigrants, all from Venezuela, housed at Guantanamo Bay as of early Thursday.
Also Thursday, Honduras’ foreign ministry announced that the country had accepted a flight of what it said was 174 Venezuelan immigrants from the U.S., who would immediately be removed from Honduras to Venezuela.
A senior Department of Homeland Security official said 177 migrants were deported from Guantanamo Bay on Thursday.
A picture of the plane on which the immigrants were flown to Honduras was tweeted out by Honduras’ foreign minister. The tail number on the plane in the picture corresponds to a flight that went from Guantanamo to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Thursday, according to FlightRadar24.com.
The Trump administration had made a show of moving migrants to Guantanamo, saying it would be sending the “worst of the worst.”
More immigrants may be sent to Guantanamo at some point. But two sources familiar with the matter said that DHS has asked the Department of Defense to look for alternative locations, and that DoD is considering other places like Fort Bliss.
Didi Martinez contributed.
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