Havana doesn’t want to receive them, and Washington doesn’t know what to do with them.
14ymedio, Havana, January 3o, 2025 — Dozens of Cuban migrants detained in the United States have been stranded for weeks at the Guantanamo Naval Base. The story was revealed this Thursday by The New York Times (NYT) in a report by journalist Carol Rosenberg, the newspaper’s correspondent in Guantanamo for more than twenty years and one of the reporters with the best knowledge of the base’s inner workings.
According to the US newspaper, around 50 Cuban men, aged between 20 and 50, were transferred to Guantanamo in December and January as part of an operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Many of them had been detained in the United States for months, some with work permits and pending asylum applications. Faced with uncertainty, several agreed to return to Cuba. But they never imagined the flight would end at the naval base.
Since then, they have remained confined in military facilities, first in former barracks and, more recently, in Camp 6, a prison that for years housed jihadists. The transfer occurred, according to sources cited by the Times, due to technical problems in other buildings on the base.
The principle obstacle isn’t in Washington, but in Havana. Cuba maintains severe restrictions on flights from the base to the rest of the country. For one of these men to reach Cuban soil, he would first have to fly to a U.S. city and from there board another plane to Cuba. That operation, which U.S. officials claim to have considered, was never carried out.
Cuba is among the countries most reluctant to accept the return of its own deported citizens.
There have been no official declarations from the Cuban government, no press releases, and no public explanations regarding the situation of these citizens. Nor have there been any visible efforts to expedite their return. The only known policy is the acceptance of a single monthly deportation flight from the United States, a number that Washington has unsuccessfully requested be increased, according to diplomatic sources cited by the newspaper. In fact, the flight scheduled for January should have departed yesterday—they always leave on the last Thursday of each month, unless it coincides with a US holiday—and it has not yet taken place.
The lack of gestures on the part of Havana has created a moment of heightened tension with the Trump administration, which, following the arrest of Nicolás Maduro on January 3, has maintained intense pressure on the island, declaring it an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to its national security and foreign policy. According to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity , the regime has continued to refuse to increase the frequency of repatriation flights.
According to Refugees International, Cuba is among the countries most reluctant to accept the return of its own deported citizens. “The Cuban government doesn’t want to receive them back,” confirmed Yael Schacher, an analyst with the organization, quoted by the NYT, noting that the current economic crisis—marked by blackouts, food shortages, and fuel scarcity—reinforces that posture.
The result is a limbo in which Cubans are trapped between two governments, with no clear rights or defined timelines. Some have managed to call relatives in the US, who in turn have informed family members on the island. On social media, wives and mothers have created support groups where rumors of release, messages of faith, and snippets of phone calls from the base circulate.
An order signed by President Trump in January 2025 instructed that the base be prepared to receive up to 30,000 deportees.
The immigration operation that brought them to Guantanamo originated from an order signed by President Trump in January 2025, instructing that the base be prepared to receive up to 30,000 deportees. A year later, the actual number is far from that target. According to the New York Times itself, some 780 people have passed through the base under this scheme, without the U.S. government having demonstrated that most of them had criminal records.
The cost of the operation is also not transparent. The Pentagon acknowledged to Congress that the first month cost $40 million. Since then, no official figures have been released. Democratic Senator Gary Peters, chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, estimated that the cost of the operation could reach about $100,000 per day for each migrant detained at the base.
Tom Cartwright, an activist and migrant rights advocate who has monitored ICE flights for years, questioned the necessity of Guantanamo as a transit station for these deportations. In his view, the use of the base is not based on a real logistical need, but rather on a political decision.
Cartwright believes that the Cubans held in Guantanamo serve as a tool of pressure against Havana, in an attempt to force the Cuban government to accept more than one monthly repatriation flight, a demand that has so far been rejected.
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security has responded to questions from the Times about why these men are still there or when they will be transferred. Nor has the Havana regime.
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