The United States has spent 40 million dollars in prison of about 400 migrants in Guantánenamo

Five senators who visited the North -American base in the Bay of Guantanamo, Cuba, criticized the mission of migrants there over the weekend as a waste of resources, after the Pentagon estimated that the operation had cost $ 40 million the first month.

The Senate Delegation on Friday resorted to immigration and customs facilities where about 85 migrants were held, included in the prison that for years they stayed for war detainees linked to Al Qaeda.

Senators also spoke with officials of the National Defense and Security Departments. Around 1,000 government employees, mainly the military, are to the staff of the migrant operation.

The administration has sent less than 400 men, at least half Venezuelans, at the base since February as part of President Trump’s repression of illegal immigration. Authorities returned about half to US facilities without explaining why it was necessary to stay in Guantánamo for short stays.

From Monday, there were fewer than 90 immigration detainees at the base after The north -Americans were delivered 17 Salvadorans and Venezuelans of Guantánamo in a prison in El Salvador.

Rhode Island’s Senator Jack Reed, who was part of the delegation, blamed the administration on Sunday to “divert the troops from his primary missions” in Guantánamo.

Reed, the ranking of the armed service committee, said in an interview that he was provided with an estimate that the operation had cost $ 40 million in the first month.

“All this is extraordinarily expensive and unnecessary,” he said. Instead, the administration should “try to improve ice facilities in the United States.”

The others on the trip were the Senators Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the highest democrat of the Foreign Relations Committee; Gary Peters de Michigan, the highest Democrat of the National Security Committee; Alex Padilla, California Democrat; and Angus King, independent of Maine.

The Department of Defense advised the Congress that, from March 12, the Migrant of Guantanamo had cost $ 39.3 million, according to congressional assistants, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because Congress’s Pentagon and communications are considered sensitive. This estimate covered a period of six weeks when the Trump administration had moved 290 migrants there, including 177 Venezuelans who were repatriated.

The Senate’s trip throughout the day was a low -profile event compared to those of the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Kristi callsThe Secretary of National Security, which each led to the news photographers with them. But just as during their visits, the senators were there when the administration flew in a small number of migrants: 13 Nicaraguns of an ice installation in Louisiana. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesman for the National Security Department, described them as “band members.”

On Saturday, hours after the delegation issued a statement Instant the administration to “immediately cease this wrong mission”, a C-130 loading aircraft of San Antonio Air Force brought 12 more migrants to the operation.

She was the first military shuttle to carry Migrants in Guantánamo since the ice began to use less expensive chartered aircraft to transport migrants to the base on February 28. The government refused to explain the use of most expensive military aircraft. “Immigration and the application of customs cannot comment due to pending litigation,” ICE said in a statement on Monday.

“After examining the Migrants’ transfer activities to Guantánamo Bay, we are outraged by the scale and waste of the misuse of the Trump administration of our military,” the five senators said in the statement.

They called the migrant operation “unsustainable, operating under a questionable legal authority and detrimental to our military preparation.”

Guantánamo is a particularly expensive place because a field of Cuban mines is cut off from the rest of the island. The base produces its own energy and water, and the supplies are sent from Florida by barge and planes.

The delegation was critical of the mission, but not of the 900 military members and 100 national security employees who had been mobilized at the base to carry it.

Some troops “were transferred to Guantanamo Bay without warning, leaving behind their critical military missions daily in order to build tents that should never be filled and ensured by immigrants who should never be there,” said the statement.

“This would be better both economically and in terms of legal clarity if the military was not involved,” he continued.

The ice decides when it needs military aircraft and the Pentagon provides them, according to two government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss arrangements.

Congress assistants said that the operation was governed by a secret memorandum between the defense and the national security departments who say that only migrants with links with transnational criminal organizations can be sent to the Bay of Guantánamo.

Said Mr. Hegseth On January 30, Guantanamo would serve as a temporary traffic point for “violent criminal illegal, as they are deported outside the country.”

But the administration has refused to provide evidence that foreign nationals who remained at the base had violent criminal history. The checks of some that have been made public have shown that their crimes were illegally entering the United States, sometimes more than once.

The National Security Department has housed 395 migrants in Guantánamo Bay, some for a few days, as the first 10 were brought on February 4, according to the New York Times follow -up of transfers.

On February 20, the United States sent 177 Venezuelans from Guantanamo to Honduras, where they were put on a Venezuelan plane and flew home.

All the others, less than the others, were returned to the ice facilities of the United States and in a few cases known were deported there.