\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration on Thursday transferred all of the Venezuelan migrants it had brought to the U.S. military base at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba<\/a>, suddenly emptying a detention operation that it had just as abruptly started <\/span>this month.<\/p>\n Two passenger planes operated by Global X, a charter aircraft company, flew to the naval base on Thursday morning and shuttled most of the migrants to an airfield in Honduras. They were to then be put aboard a Venezuelan plane for repatriation.<\/p>\n Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said 177 migrants had been transferred to Venezuelan custody, and one had been brought back to an immigration facility in the United States. In a declaration<\/a> filed in court earlier on Thursday, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had said 178 Venezuelans were at the base.<\/p>\n It was unclear whether the administration intended to send additional migrants to the base.<\/p>\n But an ICE official, Juan E. Agudelo, said in a court filing Thursday that the immigration agency intended to use Guant\u00e1namo \u201cas a temporary staging facility for aliens being repatriated\u201d and said they would be held there for \u201cthe time necessary to effect the removal orders.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The transfers cleared out the migrants at a time when the operation has raised numerous questions<\/a> about whether the government had legitimate legal authority to take people from ICE facilities in the United States to the base in Cuba for continued detention. Immigrant rights\u2019 lawyers have gone to court seeking access to the migrants<\/a>, and rights groups have been expected to file a broader challenge to the Trump administration\u2019s policy.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a way to avoid litigation from getting traction,\u201d said Harold Hongju Koh, a Yale Law School professor who worked as a lawyer in the State Department during the Obama administration, has long been involved in litigation over detainees at Guant\u00e1namo. He added, \u201cPossession is nine-tenths of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n The turnover took place at the Soto Cano air base, where the U.S. military\u2019s Southern Command has maintained a presence<\/a> for decades, a statement from Honduras said.<\/p>\n The Honduran government said<\/a> it was facilitating the transfer for what it described as humanitarian reasons.<\/p>\n On Jan. 29, Mr. Trump directed the U.S. military and the Homeland Security Department to prepare to expand a migrant operations center at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, saying it would \u201cprovide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The military began transporting migrants to the base on near daily flights from an immigration site in El Paso, starting on Feb. 4. In announcing the first transfer flight, the Pentagon cast the operation<\/a> as a \u201ctemporary measure\u201d to secure the migrants \u201cuntil they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.\u201d<\/p>\n All of the migrants taken to Guant\u00e1namo to date have been citizens of Venezuela. It has been difficult to deport people to the country because of the breakdown in relations between its authoritarian government and the United States.<\/p>\n But a Trump adviser, Richard Grenell, visited Venezuela in late January<\/a> and appeared to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough, which included an agreement that Venezuela would resume accepting deportees<\/a>. On Feb. 10, Venezuela sent two planes<\/a> to El Paso to pick up about 190 of its citizens, whom the Homeland Security Department described as under final deportation orders.<\/p>\n Speaking on television on Thursday, President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro of Venezuela described the return of \u201c177 men who we have rescued\u201d as a victory for his government and the result of a \u201cdirect petition\u201d his government had made to the United States.<\/p>\n Mr. Maduro said that his interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, widely viewed in Venezuela as a major orchestrator and symbol of state repression, would meet returnees at the airport. \u201cIn Venezuela, we give them a welcome as a productive force, with a loving hug,\u201d Mr. Maduro said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the flights to Venezuela have resumed, it has not been clear why some Venezuelans were taken to Guant\u00e1namo.<\/p>\n Trump administration officials had initially portrayed the migrants taken to Guant\u00e1namo as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the State Department included on a list of transnational cartels and gangs the administration designated as foreign terrorist organizations on Thursday.<\/p>\n But it is not clear whether that is true for any of the migrants: Congressional staff members were told in a briefing that the only criteria to be sent to the base were being Venezuelan with a final removal order.<\/p>\n As of Wednesday, Ms. McLaughlin, the homeland security spokeswoman, had said simply that ICE was using Guant\u00e1namo \u201cto house detainees subject to final orders of removal.\u201d She also referred to them as \u201cfinal order aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n Luis Castillo, 29, was among the Venezuelans held at Guant\u00e1namo<\/a>. According to his family, he left Venezuela years ago for economic reasons, tried to make a living in Colombia \u2014 he worked for a time washing cars \u2014 and eventually left for the United States in hopes of making more money to support his family, including a young son.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His sister Yajaira Castillo said he presented himself at the U.S. border on Jan. 19 in an attempt to claim asylum, and he was detained and then sent to Guant\u00e1namo.<\/p>\n When she heard he was being sent back to Venezuela, she said, she had mixed emotions. She was glad he would be released. But she was saddened by \u201cthis cruelty that they inflicted on us Venezuelans\u201d by keeping her brother and others at Guant\u00e1namo. She and other family members of detainees have connected on a WhatsApp group, where they have consoled one another. \u201cThey made us suffer so much,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Ms. McLaughlin has said Mr. Castillo is part of Tren de Aragua, but she has presented no evidence. Mr. Castillo\u2019s family maintains that he is not a criminal and was portrayed as a gang member because of a Michael Jordan tattoo on his neck.<\/p>\n