Does Guantanamo Bay Still Exist? Who’s Held There Now

Yes. The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is still open. More than two decades after the first prisoners arrived on January 11, 2002, the military prison holds 15 men captured during the post-9/11 conflict, staffed by roughly 800 soldiers and civilians.¹ The naval base has also taken on a second role under the Trump administration, which began using it as a staging site for immigration detention in early 2025.²

The 15 Men Still Held

The remaining war-on-terror detainees fall into four groups.

Facing charges. Seven men are being prosecuted in the military commission system. Five are accused of planning the September 11, 2001, attacks: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh.³ Two face separate charges: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of masterminding the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and Encep Nurjaman (known as Hambali), linked to the 2002 Bali bombings.⁴

Convicted. Two men. Ali Hamza al-Bahlul is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit war crimes, though most of his conviction was overturned on appeal. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi pleaded guilty in 2022 and received a 10-year sentence in June 2024, but a federal judge blocked his planned transfer to Iraq in January 2025 over concerns about inadequate medical care and risk of abuse. Judge Emmet G. Sullivan ordered the government not to move him without his consent until his legal claims are resolved.⁵

Cleared but stuck. Three detainees have been cleared for transfer by government review boards but remain at the facility because no country has agreed to accept them: a Libyan, a Somali, and a stateless Rohingya man.⁶

Held without charges. The remaining three are held in indefinite law-of-war detention without charges and without clearance for release. Among them is Abu Zubaydah, who has never been charged with a crime despite nearly 20 years in custody.⁷ The government has refused to release him in part because he possesses knowledge of classified CIA interrogation methods.⁶

Since the facility opened, approximately 780 people have been held there. Nine detainees died in custody between 2002 and 2021; seven reportedly by suicide, two from natural causes. None of those who died had been charged with or convicted of a crime.⁸

Why the 9/11 Case Still Has No Verdict

The prosecution of the five men accused of plotting September 11 has stretched across more than two decades of pretrial proceedings. In the summer of 2024, military prosecutors and the Pentagon’s senior official for Guantánamo reached plea agreements with three of the defendants (Mohammed, bin Attash, and al-Hawsawi) under which they would plead guilty in exchange for life sentences, removing the death penalty from the table.⁹ Days later, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew the deals, saying the victims’ families and the public deserved to see the cases go to trial.¹⁰

A military judge ruled in November 2024 that the plea agreements were already in effect. On July 11, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed that decision in a 2-1 ruling, holding that Austin acted within his authority. Judges Patricia Millett and Neomi Rao formed the majority, with Judge Robert Wilkins dissenting.⁹ Unless the Supreme Court or an en banc panel intervenes, the three defendants must restart pretrial litigation, including suppression hearings.¹¹

The fourth co-defendant, Ammar al-Baluchi, did not enter a plea deal. In April 2025, military judge Col. Matthew McCall issued a 111-page ruling suppressing al-Baluchi’s 2007 confessions to FBI agents, finding them involuntary because they were “irreconcilably tainted” by years of CIA torture. The ruling documented over 1,100 rounds of “enhanced interrogation,” including beatings, sleep deprivation lasting 82 consecutive hours, and simulated waterboarding.¹² Prosecutors had described the suppressed statements as the most critical evidence in their case against him.¹³ The fifth co-defendant, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, was severed from the case in September 2023 after being found mentally incompetent to stand trial, a condition reportedly caused by his own treatment in CIA custody.¹¹

The case also lacks a presiding judge. Col. McCall retired in spring 2025, and the commission system’s chief judge is serving as a placeholder until a replacement is assigned.¹¹ More than 24 years after the attacks, no trial date has been set for any of the 9/11 defendants.

The USS Cole Case Is the Closest to Trial

The prosecution of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri for the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 American sailors, is the closest any Guantánamo military commission case has come to trial. Jury selection is scheduled to begin on June 1, 2026.¹⁴ Nashiri has been in U.S. custody since 2002. A military judge ruled in 2023 that his 2007 confession could not be used because he had been tortured. In December 2025, the current judge, Col. Matthew S. Fitzgerald, threw out a taped deposition of a cooperating witness because it had been overseen by a prior judge who was later found to have acted unethically.¹⁵

Migrants Are Now Held at the Base Too

On January 29, 2025, President Trump issued a memorandum directing the expansion of a “Migrant Operations Center” at the naval station to full capacity, with the stated purpose of providing detention space for individuals the administration described as “high-priority criminal aliens.”¹⁶ Trump expressed an intent to house up to 30,000 migrants at the base.²

The actual numbers have been far smaller. Roughly 500 migrants were sent to the base between February and mid-2025, typically staying an average of 14 days before being deported or moved elsewhere. The cost has been roughly $100,000 per person per day, compared to about $165 per day for ICE detention on the U.S. mainland.¹⁷ In June 2025, the administration began preparations to transfer thousands more migrants to the facility, including citizens of allied nations such as Britain, France, and Italy, without notifying their home governments, according to the Washington Post.¹⁸

The operation hit a setback in late August 2025 when an underwater pipeline supplying water to the facility suffered structural damage. Naval personnel discovered the failure on August 28, and the cause remains under investigation. No migrants have been detained at the center while repairs are pending, though those already on the base were relocated to Camp 6, a former prison building previously used for suspected terrorists.¹⁷

The immigration use has drawn a class-action lawsuit, Luna Gutierrez v. Noem, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In December 2025, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan certified a class of immigration detainees and denied the government’s motion to dismiss, ruling that the Immigration and Nationality Act does not bar judicial review of detainee transfers to the base and that the policy may not be authorized by existing immigration law.¹⁹

Why the Prison Has Never Closed

Every president since George W. Bush has grappled with the facility. Barack Obama ordered it closed within a year of taking office in January 2009 and restricted interrogation techniques to those in the Army field manual.²⁰ Congress blocked him. Starting with the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, lawmakers prohibited the use of Defense Department funds to transfer detainees to U.S. soil or to build domestic facilities for housing them.²¹ That ban effectively made military commissions at Guantánamo the only prosecution option for the remaining prisoners, since they could not be brought to federal court in the United States.²² These congressional restrictions have been renewed annually.

The Biden administration focused on transfers, moving 25 detainees out of the facility over four years. That included a final push of 11 Yemeni prisoners sent to Oman and four others released in late 2024 and early January 2025.³ Biden had inherited 40 detainees and left 15. The Trump administration, by contrast, transferred just one detainee during its first term.²³

What Legally Authorizes the Detentions

The government’s authority to hold Guantánamo detainees rests primarily on the Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed by Congress on September 18, 2001. The AUMF empowered the president to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for the 9/11 attacks or who harbored them. Courts have read that authority to include the power to detain enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities, a principle affirmed by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in 2004.²⁴ The 2012 NDAA further codified that authority, allowing the military to hold individuals who were “part of” or provided “substantial support” to al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.²⁵

The Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in Boumediene v. Bush established that Guantánamo detainees have the constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal court.²⁰ In practice, the D.C. Circuit has generally upheld the government’s broad interpretation of who can be detained under the AUMF.²⁵

Trials at Guantánamo are conducted through military commissions, a system established by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 for prosecuting non-citizens classified as “unprivileged enemy belligerents.” Judges and jury panel members are military officers rather than life-tenured civilian judges and jurors from the general population. Convictions require a two-thirds vote rather than unanimity, hearsay evidence is admissible under looser rules, and there is no formal right to a speedy trial, a gap the 9/11 case has made unmistakable.²⁶

1
The New York Times. Guantánamo Prison 25th Anniversary
2
Politico. Trump Plans Migrants Guantanamo Bay
3
NPR. Guantanamo Biden Legacy
4
The New York Times. Guantanamo Bay Detainees
5
The New York Times. Guantanamo Iraq Transfer Court
6
The Conversation. Trump Inherits the Guantanamo Prison Complete With 4 Forever Prisoners
7
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Experts Call Release Guantanamo Bay Detainee Abu Zubaydah Arbitrarily
8
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Guantanamo Bay Ugly Chapter Unrelenting Human Rights Violations
9
CBS News. Plea Deal 9/11 Mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Thrown Out
10
France 24. US Appeals Court Scraps 9/11 Mastermind’s Plea Deal
11
Lawdragon. DC Circuit Throws Out 9/11 Plea Deals
12
The New York Times. Sept 11 Confession Torture
13
Lawfare. New Facts About the RDI Program and the Treatment of a 9/11 Defendant
14
U.S. Department of Defense. Military Commissions Media Invitation Announced for United States v. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
15
The New York Times. Guantanamo USS Cole Trial
16
The White House. Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Capacity
17
NPR. Guantanamo Migrants Water Deportations ICE
18
The Washington Post. Trump Guantanamo Deportations
19
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse. Luna Gutierrez v. Noem
20
Encyclopædia Britannica. Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp
21
Harvard Law Review. National Defense Authorization Act – Section: Transfer Restrictions
22
Congressional Research Service. Military Commissions at Guantanamo
23
Friends Committee on National Legislation. Anniversary Guantanamo President Biden Must Do All He Can Close It
24
U.S. Department of Justice. Memorandum Regarding Detention Authority
25
Congressional Research Service. CRS Report on AUMF and Detention Authority
26
Human Rights First. Some Key Facts on Military Commissions v. Federal Courts