A group of Democratic senators are pushing back against the Trump administration over its stance on the detainment of undocumented individuals at Guantanamo Bay.
U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff is spearheading a growing opposition to the detention of migrants at Guantanamo Bay, expressing concerns over human rights risks and the potential impact on military readiness.
On Friday, Feb. 28, Ossoff, joined by senators Chris Coons (D-DE), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth urging against the mass detention of migrants at the military facility. The lawmakers warned that such operations could harm human rights and divert critical resources away from the Department of Defense’s core mission.
“We oppose placing U.S. military and DoD civilian personnel in the legally and morally tenuous position of conducting mass migrant detention operations. Our men and women in uniform are warfighters, not jailers of migrants,” Ossoff and the group said. “The dramatically expanded use of U.S. military personnel and facilities to support mass detention operations overseas will divert DoD personnel and resources from its core warfighting mission.”
The group emphasized that diverting military personnel and resources to detention operations would undermine the Department of Defense’s primary focus on national defense.
The senators also raised concerns about the conditions in which migrants would be detained, citing past abuses in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) facilities. In 2022, Sen. Ossoff led a bipartisan investigation that uncovered disturbing practices at a DHS-contracted facility in Georgia, where female detainees were subjected to unnecessary and invasive gynecological procedures.
The investigation further fueled the lawmakers’ concerns that DHS would not have the capacity or commitment to ensure humane conditions at Guantanamo Bay.
“Given widespread and well-documented abuse of detainees in DHS and DHS-contracted facilities in the United States, we lack confidence that DHS political leadership has the will or capacity to conduct such detention operations at NS Guantánamo Bay humanely,” the group continued in a letter to the administration. “We are concerned that longstanding deficiencies in transparency, health care, and access to counsel throughout the existing DHS detention complex will be magnified when such detention occurs at a remote military facility.”
As part of their inquiry, the senators have called for detailed information on the Department of Defense’s involvement in the Guantanamo Bay detention operations, including the cost, the number of military personnel allocated to the mission, and which units will be tasked with supporting the operation.
