On Jan. 11, 2002, the U.S. military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay was established. In the two decades since, roughly 780 individuals have been held at the prison under the guise of the failed War on Terror.
“Our nation will be more secure the day when that prison is finally and responsibly closed.”
Currently 15 men, captured during the so-called “War on Terror,” remain detained at Guantánamo. Six of these men have never been charged with a crime. The other nine detainees have either been charged with war crimes in the Guantánamo military commissions system or have been convicted and are currently serving prison sentences.
More than 500 detainees were transferred out of Guantánamo during the George W. Bush administration. President Barack Obama brought the number down to 41 and only one detainee was transferred during the first Trump administration. During the Biden administration, 25 detainees were transferred out of the facility. Those who remain are trapped in a facility widely considered to be the world’s most notorious prison, with inadequate access to necessary medical care.
Now, the Trump administration is further criminalizing migration with militarized responses, removing migrants—without due process—from U.S. soil to Guantánamo. On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order directing the expansion of detention operations for “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.” He suggested that 30,000 migrants could be held at Guantánamo. The military imprisonment of migrants at Guantánamo Bay heightens the already unconscionable detention of migrants caught at sea at the Migrant Operations Center at Guantánamo.
The Cost of Guantanamo
A Question of Morality
As a Quaker organization, FCNL believes in the principle of “seeing that of God in everyone.” As a nation that purports to guide itself by high moral standards, the United States has an obligation to uphold its stated values of justice, freedom, and equality. Those values require that we close Guantánamo. Each day that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is open deepens the stain on our country’s moral fabric.
A Threat to Our National Security
The existence of the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay is more than just a moral crisis—it’s a threat to national security. As a symbol of torture and indefinite detention, Guantánamo has been—and continues to be—used as a recruitment tool for transnational terror networks.
According to former CIA director John Brennan, “Our nation will be more secure the day when that prison is finally and responsibly closed.” And members of Congress agree. In 2021, two dozen U.S. senators wrote in a letter to President Biden that the military prison is a “symbol of lawlessness and human rights abuses” which “continues to hinder counterterrorism efforts and cooperation with allies.”
An Economic Burden
There’s no way around it—keeping Guantánamo open is financially irresponsible. It costs $36 million per year to hold each “War on Terror” detainee, with a total annual cost to American taxpayers of $540 million just to keep the facility operating.
By comparison, it costs $78,000 per year for each inmate at a U.S. supermax prison. Guantánamo is considered the most expensive prison in the world, making it even more difficult to justify its continued existence.
A Blurring of Lines
Despite the rhetoric around forced migration, migrants are not military detainees and retain constitutional rights anywhere within U.S. jurisdiction, including at Guantánamo. Military detention at Guantánamo is only authorized under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for specific groups linked to the 9/11 attacks. This is reinforced by Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012 (NDAA), which reaffirms the AUMF’s detention authority and also provides that it does not apply to any person arrested in the United States, regardless of legal status. Similarly, any NDAA provisions restricting transfers of detainees at Guantánamo do not apply to migrants at Guantánamo.
We urge President Trump to end this shameful chapter in American history by closing the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay immediately.
