Trump's 30,000-Detainee Guantanamo Plan Wasted $2.85 Million on Tents That Never Housed Anyone

Trump's Order, 30,000 Beds, and Unusable Tents

On January 29, 2025, President Donald Trump directed his Defense and Homeland Security secretaries to expand migrant detention at Guantanamo Bay "to full capacity", and announced plans for 30,000 detainees.¹² Defense assembled tents for an initial 5,000 beds. DHS then determined that they did not meet detention standards, and they came down without housing anyone.³ Setting them up cost about $2.85 million.⁴

By mid-February 2025, Defense officials told auditors, the mission had been downsized because detaining 30,000 people was infeasible, in part because compliant facilities were prohibitively expensive to build.⁵ In fiscal 2026, the base held an average of 16 detainees a day through June 18.³ The Government Accountability Office found waste.³

The expansion was Trump's own order. His memorandum begins "I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security" and names the purpose: detention space for "high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States".¹ The number came from him as well: the Defense Department reported that day that he had announced plans to order the base prepared for 30,000 criminal migrants, and GAO documented the departments' effort to reach 30,000 beds.²³

The inspectors general reported the tents' cost, which included placement and additional fencing; the tents came from stocks already on the base, military personnel put them up, and the government stored them for future use.⁴ GAO's September 24, 2026 audit stated the consequence directly:³

GAO-26-108663, Immigration Detention: Urgent Planning Needed to Avoid Further Waste of Taxpayer Dollars, page 7³

Changing plans and high operating costs have resulted in incurring unnecessary costs, which resulted in waste at Guantanamo Bay.

The broader detention expansion followed Trump's January 20 order to build or contract for detention facilities, addressed in [Inside Detention](detention_casefile.md).⁶

Tens of Millions in Commitments, and Costly Flights

Taxpayers paid for tents that produced no detention space, while the operation diverted military planning time and base services.³⁴ U.S. Transportation Command reported periods when DHS canceled up to 60 percent of requested flights, wasting planning hours and leaving readiness underused.⁴ From July through December 2025, the command flew 31 military flights for the operation at a cost of $21.9 million, about $708,020 per mission.⁴ The naval station reported delays in routine maintenance and support because its limited contractor workforce had to meet the detention operation's unplanned requirements.⁴

For immigration detention at Guantanamo since October 1, 2024, GAO reported, Defense committed approximately $68 million through May 31, 2026, and ICE approximately $43 million through June 30, 2026, the latter "for a small average daily population".³

Those totals are not a tally of waste. GAO found waste from changing plans and high operating costs at Guantanamo, including about $2.85 million spent setting up tents that never housed detainees; it did not quantify the total waste.³⁴ GAO's July report said Defense officials attributed most of the $66 million committed through March 31, 2026 to startup costs at the beginning of 2025, including moving personnel and equipment and setting up a joint task force headquarters, and DHS was responsible for repaying Defense for its fiscal 2026 support.⁵

A Transit Mission Had Real Use, but the Expansion Failed

The administration's defense is transit. "This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay", Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in the Defense Department's account of his January 29, 2025 interview.² He called the base the "perfect place" to hold migrants safely when countries refused to take their nationals back, pointed to the naval station's experience with migrant operations, and said migrant detention would not necessarily require the same security as detention of suspected terrorists.²

The operation did move people: DHS reported 708 arrivals by the end of December 2025, with 691 people transferred to holding facilities in the United States or repatriated and an average stay of 14 days.⁴ For roughly 50 days between mid-October and mid-December 2025, during Hurricane Melissa and the government shutdown, the base held no detainees, a gap inside the period GAO averaged.⁴³ That is real transit activity, and the interruption helps explain the low average.⁴

The failed expansion remains: the tents housed nobody, and the 30,000-person plan was deemed infeasible, Defense officials told GAO, in part because compliant facilities were too expensive.³ The inspectors general also reported that neither Defense nor DHS supplied a specific national security justification, cost benefit, or other benefit explaining why people were sent to Guantanamo rather than mainland facilities.⁴

Spending First, Planning Later

Guantanamo was one of six new detention initiatives that GAO found ICE pursued without a comprehensive strategic plan; by July 2026, ICE had scaled back four of them, wasting or potentially wasting resources.³ ICE had not assessed the risks and benefits of high-cost facilities, including Guantanamo, against less costly options in its traditional detention portfolio.³

ICE reported buying 11 warehouses for about $1.07 billion and told GAO in June 2026 that it was working to sell seven; GAO found waste there too, including $7.7 million in nonrecoverable purchase costs and an estimated $12.8 million for utilities, security and other services as of August 2026.³

The remedy is a promise to plan. In a written response dated September 15, 2026, DHS agreed to GAO's recommendation and promised a plan covering capacity, facilities, staffing, contracts, funding, and coordination, with completion estimated for August 31, 2027.⁷ GAO replied in its report that, given the potential for continued waste, "more timely completion may be warranted".³ On October 1, 2026, it listed the recommendation as open.⁸

Trump ordered the expansion and announced plans for 30,000 detainees.¹² His departments spent about $2.85 million on tents they could not use and pursued a capacity goal that, Defense officials told GAO, was deemed infeasible.⁴³ ICE used the base on a small scale without comparing its high operating costs with cheaper options, and GAO found waste.³ This belongs in an impeachment case as wasteful execution of the President's own directive: public resources committed to an unworkable expansion, with the basic planning remedy promised only after the money was committed.¹³⁷