Is Guantánamo Bay Prison Still Open? Detainees, Cases, and Costs

Yes, the Guantánamo Bay prison is still open. More than two decades after the first prisoners arrived on January 11, 2002, the military detention facility on the U.S. naval base in Cuba continues to hold 15 men captured during the post-9/11 “war on terror,” guarded by roughly 800 soldiers and civilians. Under the second Trump administration, the base has also taken on a second detention mission as a transit and holding site for immigrants arrested by ICE.¹

Who Is Still Held There

Fifteen men remain at the wartime facility, down from a peak of about 780 who have passed through since 2002. Of those 780, 755 have been released or transferred, and nine have died in custody.¹ The 15 who remain fall into four groups.

Nine are involved in the military commissions process. Five are defendants in the September 11 case, one is accused of masterminding the 2000 USS Cole bombing, and one faces charges tied to the 2002 Bali bombings.²

Two have been convicted. Ali Hamza al-Bahlul is serving a life sentence for conspiracy to commit war crimes. Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi was sentenced to ten years following a 2024 plea deal and has sued to block a planned transfer to an Iraqi prison, citing concerns about abuse and inadequate medical care there.³

Three have been cleared for release by Periodic Review Boards but remain imprisoned because no country has agreed to accept them: a Libyan, a Somali, and a stateless Rohingya man.⁴

Three are held indefinitely without charge or trial. The government considers them too dangerous to release but lacks evidence to prosecute them, in part because their cases are entangled with classified information about CIA interrogation and torture programs. They are Abu Zubaydah, Abu Faraj al-Libi, and Muhammad Rahim.¹

The 9/11 Case Is Still Stalled

The case against the five men accused of planning the September 11 attacks — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, Ammar al-Baluchi, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh — has been in pretrial proceedings for more than a decade. Years of CIA “enhanced interrogation” compromised the government’s evidence and produced endless litigation over what can be used at trial.⁵

In the summer of 2024, three defendants (Mohammed, bin Attash, and al-Hawsawi) signed plea agreements with the military commission’s convening authority. They would plead guilty in exchange for life sentences, taking the death penalty off the table. Then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin withdrew from those deals days later, in August 2024, claiming authority as the superior convening authority to void them unilaterally.⁶

The military judge and a military appeals panel initially ruled Austin’s withdrawal invalid. On July 11, 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with the government 2-1, holding that the defense secretary had lawful authority to rescind the deals, and issued writs of mandamus prohibiting the military judge from accepting guilty pleas.⁷ Defense lawyers have sought Supreme Court review. The Chief Justice granted an extension to file a certiorari petition until June 5, 2026.⁸

No trial date has been set. A fifth military judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, took over the case in December 2025, and suppression hearings for Mohammed, bin Attash, and al-Hawsawi were scheduled to resume in late March 2026. A separate appeal is pending over whether confessions from al-Baluchi should be excluded because they were obtained through CIA torture; his pretrial proceedings have been stayed while that appeal is decided.⁹

Bin al-Shibh was declared mentally incompetent to stand trial in September 2023 and severed from the case. A panel of U.S. military doctors diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychotic features and concluded that his condition resulted from CIA torture.¹⁰

The USS Cole Case Is Closer to Trial

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, accused of orchestrating the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors, has been in U.S. custody since 2002. His case has had its own setbacks. A 2019 D.C. Circuit ruling vacated roughly two years of pretrial proceedings after finding that the presiding military judge had created an “intolerable cloud of partiality” by applying for a Justice Department job while the DOJ was prosecuting the case.¹¹ In 2023, a military judge barred the use of al-Nashiri’s 2007 confession, ruling it was obtained through torture.

Even so, the case is further along than the 9/11 proceedings. Jury selection was scheduled to begin on June 1, 2026, under the current presiding judge, Col. Matthew S. Fitzgerald, though the defense filed a motion in March 2026 to continue that date.¹² Additional pretrial hearings were scheduled for August 2026.¹³

The “Forever Prisoners”

Three men are held with no charges and no trial in sight. The best known is Abu Zubaydah, captured in 2002 and among the first detainees subjected to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, including waterboarding. The U.S. government has acknowledged he was not a top al-Qaeda leader but refuses to release him because he could disclose classified details about CIA interrogation techniques.⁴ He has never been charged with a crime. In June 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the dismissal of his lawsuit against the two CIA-contracted psychologists who designed the interrogation program, holding that the Military Commissions Act strips federal courts of jurisdiction over claims about a detainee’s treatment or conditions of confinement.¹⁴

The Base Now Holds Immigration Detainees Too

On January 29, 2025, President Trump signed a directive ordering the expansion of the Migrant Operations Center at the naval station “to full capacity,” with the stated goal of providing detention space for “high-priority criminal aliens” and room for up to 30,000 immigrants.¹⁵¹⁶ Transfers of ICE detainees to the base began in February 2025.

Operations have fallen far short of that 30,000-bed goal. As of May 2026, actual capacity was roughly 400 beds, and the facility held just six immigration detainees, all Haitian nationals. Over the preceding year, 832 immigration detainees were cycled through the base on more than 100 flights, though most were held briefly before being deported or moved elsewhere.¹⁷ The operation employs 522 Defense Department personnel and about 60 ICE staff. Government employees have outnumbered detainees by roughly 100 to 1.¹⁸

Although the administration said it would send the “worst of the worst,” reporting and congressional inquiries indicate that many detainees transferred to the base were low-risk individuals without criminal records. Several U.S. senators have formally challenged the legality of the transfers, noting that Congress has not appropriated funds for this purpose and that in at least one instance a detainee was transferred to Guantánamo and then brought back to the United States.¹⁹ In December 2025, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary ruling stating that the detention of civil immigrants at Guantánamo is “impermissibly punitive” and likely unlawful, though no injunction was issued to halt the operation.¹⁷

The Department of Defense estimated the immigration detention effort would cost $73 million, nearly $20 million more than its initial projection. The broader military cost of immigration enforcement support has reached at least $2 billion, contributing to a reported Army budget deficit of $4 to $6 billion and cuts to training and military construction.²⁰

Why the Prison Has Never Closed

Every president since George W. Bush has dealt with Guantánamo, and the reasons it remains open combine politics, law, and logistics. President Obama pledged to close it on his second day in office and reduced its population from nearly 800 to 91, but Congress repeatedly blocked his efforts by passing legislation prohibiting the transfer of detainees to U.S. soil for trial or imprisonment.²¹ During his first term, President Trump closed the office responsible for negotiating detainee transfers and promised to “load it up” with new prisoners, though he never sent any and actually released one.⁵

President Biden reopened the transfer office and reduced the population from 40 to 15, with a final burst of activity in late 2024 and early January 2025: two Malaysian detainees were returned home, one Tunisian was repatriated, one Kenyan was released, and 11 Yemeni prisoners were transferred to Oman.² Biden, like Obama, was unable to resolve the 9/11 case or find countries willing to accept the remaining cleared detainees. Experts quoted by NPR said political resistance may mean the facility remains open until the last prisoners die of natural causes.⁵

What It Costs to Keep Open

Guantánamo has always been extraordinarily expensive to run. A 2019 analysis found the facility cost more than $540 million per year, roughly $13 million per detainee, compared to about $78,000 per prisoner at the federal supermax facility in Colorado. The cost is driven by the remote location, the troop presence required to guard a small number of prisoners, and the military commission proceedings themselves.²² The military commissions alone have cost over $6 billion since their inception.²³

1
Close Guantanamo. Prisoners
2
Al Jazeera. US Transfers Eleven Yemeni Detainees From Guantanamo Bay Prison to Oman
3
Center for Victims of Torture. Guantanamo Convict Sues to Stop U.S. Plan to Send Him to Prison in Iraq
4
The Conversation. Trump Inherits the Guantanamo Prison Complete With 4 Forever Prisoners
5
NPR. Guantanamo Biden Legacy
6
NPR. Guantanamo Gitmo 9/11 Plea Deal Ruling
7
U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Opinion, Case No. 25-1009
8
Supreme Court of the United States. Docket No. 25A1072
9
Lawdragon. Fate of 9/11 Torture Ruling in Hands of Military Appeals Judges
10
Prison Legal News. Mind Breakers: The Case of Ramzi bin al-Shibh
11
New York Times. Guantanamo USS Cole Trial
12
Office of Military Commissions. Commissions News
13
Department of War. Military Commissions Media Invitation Announced for United States v. Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
14
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Husayn v. Mitchell, No. 24-1468
15
The White House. Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to Full Capacity
16
The Guardian. Trump Guantanamo Detention Center
17
CBS News. Trump Guantanamo Bay Migrants
18
U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren. Hegseth Reveals Cost of Detaining Immigrants at Guantanamo Bay Nearly $20 Million More Than Initially Reported
19
U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Letter to White House Regarding Guantanamo
20
U.S. Representative John Garamendi. Hegseth Reveals Cost of Detaining Immigrants at Guantanamo Bay Nearly $20M More Than Initially Reported
21
Obama White House Archives. President Obama’s Plan to Close Guantanamo
22
New York Times. Guantanamo Bay Cost Prison
23
New York City Bar Association. Converting Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions Into an Article III Court