President Donald Trump’s plan to fly migrants to Guantanamo Bay is crashing and burning. A new military report provided to Congress this week shows that between Jan. 20 and April 8, the Pentagon spent at least $21 million sending migrants to the naval base on military aircraft. The flights are in line with Trump’s stated plan to detain 30,000 migrants in the notoriously brutal prison facility. Just one problem: Guantanamo Bay currently holds just 32 migrants. In fact, since January, only about 500 migrants have passed through the base at all. What‘s more, many of those transported on the military flights—which cost an average of $26,277 per hour—are believed to have already been flown back to the United States. This news comes just two months after administration officials told NBC that Trump was pushing ahead with his Guantanamo Bay plan despite concerns it wasn’t logistically or legally viable. The whopping price tag is the result of a major change in protocol: ICE deportation flights are typically conducted on charter planes, which on average cost just under $8,600 per hour. Unsurprisingly, the Trump administration’s shift to military planes seems to be mostly optics-based, not logistical.
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