NATIONAL HARBOR, Maryland — President Donald Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, confirmed that the administration will continue to use Guantanamo Bay as a holding facility for migrants after the Department of Homeland Security transferred over a hundred Venezuelan detainees out of the facility on Thursday.
“Absolutely, we’re just making room,” Homan told the Washington Examiner ahead of his speech at the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference when asked if the facility would still be in use.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 178 detainees from the military base early Thursday, flying 177 of them to Honduras before boarding a connecting flight to Caracas. One of the detainees was brought back to a U.S. immigration detention facility stateside.
The detainees were illegal immigrants, with several having criminal histories, gang affiliations, or had been ordered to be removed from the U.S. by a federal immigration judge.
Trump announced plans to send migrants to Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which was used to detain suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration, last month as part of his sweeping efforts to carry out mass deportations and tamp down on illegal immigration.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security data shows the Trump administration deported over 37,000 migrants during his first month in office, according to Reuters. The figure is below that of Biden’s last year in office, which averaged about 57,000, a huge jump from his previous years in office.
The acting director of ICE, Caleb Vitello, was removed by DHS from his post on Friday as reports say Trump is unhappy that arrest numbers of illegal immigrants from the agency are not higher. It is not clear who will replace Vitello.
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Homan said the decision to remove Vitello was not his, instead pointing to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem as the one who would have made the choice.
“That wasn’t my decision,” Homan said, saying questions about his removal would have to be asked of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, including why he was removed, or who will replace him because he doesn’t “know.”
The border czar conceded he is not happy with the pace of deportation efforts himself, telling the Washington Examiner that while the “numbers are good, he is not “satisfied.”
“I’m not going to be satisfied till we eradicate all of them,” Homan said. “Numbers are good, not good enough.”
However, Homan claimed that Trump was “happy” with the numbers, despite reports that say the president is getting frustrated they are not higher.
“President Trump’s very happy with the numbers. I’m happy with the numbers, but it’s not enough,” Homan said. “President Trump made a promise to the American people about mass deportation operation and to get there, we need more numbers, but we’re still prioritizing public safety threats and national security threats.”
Homan spoke in front of the annual conservative conference on Saturday afternoon, where he railed against President Joe Biden and his administration.
“I wake up every day for the last four years pissed off because the Biden administration took the most secure border of my lifetime and unsecured it on purpose, right? I worked for six presidents, starting with Ronald Reagan. Every president I ever worked for took steps to secure the border,” Homan said.
“Even President Obama took steps to secure the border. They clearly understood you can’t have national security without border security. They got it.”
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He continued, “Joe Biden’s the first president in the history of the nation, who came into office and unsecured the border on purpose.”
Illegal border crossings reached record levels during Biden’s presidency, averaging 2 million per year from 2021 to 2023. Republicans heavily campaigned against Biden’s handling of the southern border during the 2024 election cycle.