Southwest border mission has cost $330M so far — with over $40M for Guantanamo Bay alone: Sources

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The mission of the southwestern border and detention operations in Guantanamo is worth nearly $ 330 million until mid -March, according to an US employee familiar with the information informed to Congress as President Donald Trump is trying to fulfill his promise to break up into illegal immigration to the United States.

Deportation flights and detention operations in Guantanamo Bay, which held only a few hundred detained in their peak, cost nearly $ 40 million in that amount.

Currently, there are only a few dozen deported migrants in Guantanamo Bay.

The estimated costs of border operations and in Guantanamo Bay have not been reported earlier.

A photo posted by the Ministry of Homeland Security of the first flight of migrants who were part of Tren de Aragua, preparing to take off for Guantanamo Bay, February 4, 2025.

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The cost of surgery on the southwestern border is expected to continue to rise now that additional active forces continue to move to the border, where there are now more than 10,000 troops of active duty as part of the mission of the border with Mexico.

Additional costs will probably include those related to the new departments of two US Navy destroyers to this mission.

As of March 12, 2025, military services provided a total of $ 328.5 million support for the border mission, including deportation and deportment flights to the border, according to a US employee familiar with the information informed at Congress. Of this amount, $ 289.2 million was for border security operations and $ 39.3 million was for operations in Guantanamo Bay.

The price in Guantanamo Bay is extremely high, given the only few hundred detained there – although Trump had said that the cities of tents there could hold up to 30,000 deported migrants.

“There is a lot of place to accommodate many people,” Trump said that he was using Guantanamo Bay to shelter migrants on February 4 after signed an executive order to send migrants there on January 29th. “So we’ll use it … I’d like to take them out.

Photo: Eight -wheel armored vehicle is a security guard to a sign that reads in the Spanish

The eight -wheeled armored vehicle stands on a security board that reads in the Spanish “United States of Mexico Borders”, patrolling the Sunland Park border area, New Mexico, as seen by Sidad Huarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, March 28, 2025.

Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images

The detainees with the criminal records were accommodated at the detention facility, which were used to accommodate enemy fighters from the war against the terror, while others were placed in the migrant operating center, which could house only 50 migrants.

The plans have called for a tent city to be built adjacent to this migrant facility, which can accommodate the numbers mentioned by Trump and other senior administration officials.

However, the operations are not close to this, as the gradual construction initially provided for construction tents for 2500 people – but only 195 tents capable of accommodating 500 people. And they have not been used at all because they did not meet immigration and customs implementation standards, such as the inclusion of an air conditioner.

On Friday, a delegation of Democrats in the Senate visited the migrant detention operations in Guantanamo Bay and later criticized what they call “the scale and waste of Trump’s abuse for our military.”

“The stunning financial costs of throwing these immigrants from the United States and their detention in Guantanamo Bay – a mission worth tens of millions of dollars a month – is an insult to US taxpayers,” a statement from the Democrats in the Senate Armed Forces Committee said.

“President Trump can implement his immigration policies for part of the cost by using existing ice facilities in the United States, but it is obsessed with the image of using Guantanamo, regardless of price,” she adds.

Members of the US military stand near the border wall dividing Mexico and the United States, in San Diego, California, March 21, 2025.

Mike Blake/Reuters

ICE has its own navy of chartered aircraft that are used for deportation flights, which cost about $ 8,577 an hour, according to its website. In contrast, flights to Guantanamo Bay were held on the C-130JS and C-17S.

The US Transport Command said it costs $ 20,000 an hour to flight for the C-130JS and $ 28,500 a flight for the C-17th one-way Guantanamo flight from El Paso, Texas is about 4 1/2 hours on the C-17 and six hours on the C-130J, which allows to add costs quickly.

The US Transport Command also made flights to deportation to Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, India and Panama. The latest military flight happened on Friday when a military deportment flight landed in Guatemala.

ABC News reported last week that 21 deported migrants were sent to Guantanamo Bay aboard an ice -coordinated civilian -coordinated civilian flight, the first detainees, who arrive there after the more than 41 detainees in Guantanamo Bay at Louisiana Retention Center.

At the end of February, 178 detained in Guantanamo were expelled at that time, with 176 returning to their homeland Venezuela and another two returning to the United States.

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