President Donald Trump’s plan to house tens of thousands of illegal immigrants at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba is struggling to get past numerous logistical and legal challenges.

The mega detention facility that Trump envisioned a plane ride away from Florida has gone largely empty in the month and a half since the commander in chief declared his intention to repurpose the site.

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Numerous challenges, including staffing, funding, and legal issues, stand at the forefront of problems that the Trump administration is in the midst of sorting out.

How we got here

Within days of taking office in January, Trump signed a memorandum instructing the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing a 30,000-bed immigrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.

Trump made the surprise declaration during the signing of the Laken Riley Act at the White House on Jan. 29 to prepare a migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay, which was used to detain suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush administration.

The federal government has arrested 32,000 illegal immigrants within the United States since Trump took office and has already hit its 47,000-cap for beds available at immigrant detention facilities nationwide.

Guantanamo was viewed as a way to hold tens of thousands more immigrants in custody, particularly those from countries that will not accept their citizens from the U.S., including Venezuela.

Challenges arise

Part of the challenge has been in determining which agencies and departments ought to oversee the operation.

The first plane of immigrants was transported on a military cargo plane on Feb. 4, days after Trump’s announcement. The Defense Department moved expeditiously to get transportation in place and to deploy soldiers to Guantanamo Bay to facilitate the housing project.

At its peak, Guantanamo only had 178 immigrant detainees on site, far from the 30,000 figure that Trump had envisioned. In late February, all but one detainee were flown out of the base and another few dozen immigrants who were flown in in the weeks after remain on site.

More than 1,100 soldiers have been deployed to Guantanamo, which is part of the problem, according to Adam Isacson, defense oversight director of the human rights group, the Washington Office on Latin America.

Members of the military are legally not allowed to interact with immigrants. Federal immigration officers are supposed to transport, oversee, and handle detention of detainees, but few officers are permanently on site, leaving it to the military to handle, Isacson wrote in an analysis of the situation.

Costs mount up

The Trump administration has racked up significant costs just in transporting illegal immigrants by plane to the remote island in the Caribbean.

Flights have cost far more than regular deportation flights outside the country on chartered aircraft, according to cost estimates from the federal agency that deports immigrants.

“A daily scheduled charter flight average cost is $8,577 per flight hour. A special high-risk charter flight average cost is between $6,929 to $26,795 per flight hour, depending on aircraft requirements,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in a recent report. “These rates cover the cost of not only the aircraft and fuel, but also the flight crew, security personnel, an onboard medical professional and all associated aviation handling and overflight fees.”

The military-facilitated flights to Guantanamo have averaged between $23,000 and $27,000 per detainee, according to Defense figures provided to NBC News. A round trip is estimated to cost a quarter of a million dollars.

Legal troubles

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) led a lawsuit to block transfers of immigrants to Guantanamo and requested emergency stays for 10 immigrants in the U.S. at risk of being transferred without any legal authority, the organization alleged.

“Sending immigrants to a remote abusive prison is not only illegal and unprecedented, but illogical given the additional cost and logistical complications. Ultimately, this is about theatrics,” said Lee Gelernt, lead counsel and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, in a statement on March 1.

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The ACLU also filed a separate suit in February on the basis that immigrants transferred to Guantanamo were not given access to contact family and lawyers. That lawsuit remains pending.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.