‘Fake News’: White House Decries Report Trump Is ‘Ramping Up’ Guantánamo Deportations
Charlie Kirk Staff
06/11/2025

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is shutting down a wild report from The Washington Post that claims President Trump is preparing to ramp up deportations to Guantánamo Bay — even targeting citizens from allied nations.
The article, published Wednesday, relies on unnamed officials who say the administration is planning a massive expansion of migrant transfers to GTMO, supposedly involving detainees from countries like Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.
The Post even points to an internal memo with the line: “GTMO is not at capacity.”
But the White House says it’s nonsense.
“This story is Fake News. Not happening,” the press secretary said in a post on X.
In February Leavitt confirmed that the “first flights” transporting illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay have begun. During a Fox Business interview, Leavitt explained that President Donald Trump is serious about following through on his plan, which he announced when he signed the Laken Riley Act into law.
“He’s no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world,” she told Fox Business host Stuart Varney. “Venezuela as well has agreed to repatriation flights and Colombia also agreed to cooperate with the repatriation of illegal Colombian nationals that we have found in the interior of our country,” she continued. “And I can also confirm that today the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway.”
Trump spoke about the move, saying that the 30,000-person detention facility, widely known as Gitmo, would now be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back so we’re going to send them to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
“That’s a tough place to get out of. Today’s signing brings us one step closer to eradicating migrant crime in our communities once and for all,” Trump added at the time.