The Guantanamo Bay detention camp is a United States military prison located within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Established in January 2002 by the administration of President George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11th Attacks, it was used to hold individuals captured during the war on terror, principally in Afghanistan, who were designated “unlawful enemy combatants.” The facility's legal basis-indefinite detention without the habeas corpus protections or criminal-trial rights normally available in the U.S. justice system-has been the subject of sustained litigation, including several U.S. Supreme Court rulings, and remains contested. As of early 2026, the post-9/11 military prison holds a small number of detainees, distinct from a separate Migrant Operations Center on the same base used for immigration processing.

Roughly 780 men from 48 countries have passed through the camp since 2002. As of January 2025, 15 detainees remained: three cleared for or awaiting transfer, nine charged with or convicted of war crimes before military commissions, and three held in indefinite “law of war” detention without charge or a release recommendation. Outside trackers and advocacy organizations have at times cited different totals depending on cutoff dates and how “held” is defined, and these figures may not reflect transfers occurring after this article's last verification.

The most prominent ongoing proceeding is the military commission case against five men charged in connection with the September 11 attacks, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, described in the 2004 9/11 Commission Report as the attacks' principal architect. In 2024, Mohammed and two co-defendants reached a plea agreement trading guilty pleas for life sentences rather than a capital trial; then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin attempted to rescind the deal, a military judge and an appellate panel initially ruled he lacked authority to do so, and in July 2025 a divided D.C. Circuit panel reversed those rulings and reinstated the government's withdrawal. The D.C. Circuit subsequently declined to rehear the case en banc, and defense counsel sought an extension to petition the Supreme Court for certiorari. As of mid-2026 the case remains in pretrial proceedings and no trial date has been set. In January 2025, the incoming Trump administration also directed expansion of a separate Migrant Operations Center at the base to process detained migrants, a facility administratively distinct from the post-9/11 prison. For background on the camp's creation and the major legal and political turning points since 2002, see guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-history.

• National security necessity viewpoint - holds that detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists outside the ordinary criminal justice system, and outside the territorial reach of U.S. courts, is a legitimate and necessary tool of war, and that closing the facility or extending full civilian trial rights to detainees would compromise intelligence-gathering and risk releasing dangerous combatants. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-national-security-viewpoint.
• Civil liberties and rule-of-law viewpoint - holds that indefinite detention without charge, denial of habeas corpus, and the use of evidence obtained through torture or coercive interrogation violate constitutional and international legal norms, and that the camp should be closed and detainees either charged in ordinary courts or released. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-civil-liberties-viewpoint.
• Military commission legitimacy viewpoint - holds that the specially created military commission system, distinct from both civilian courts and traditional courts-martial, is an appropriate and lawful forum for trying law-of-war offenses, including terrorism, committed by non-citizen combatants. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-military-commissions-viewpoint.
• Commission illegitimacy viewpoint - holds that the military commissions are procedurally deficient compared to civilian courts or courts-martial, particularly regarding admissibility of evidence tainted by torture, and have functioned more to insulate interrogation practices from scrutiny than to deliver fair verdicts. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-commission-illegitimacy-viewpoint.
• Pragmatic closure-skeptical viewpoint - holds that, whatever the merits of closing the camp in principle, no workable alternative location, legal framework, or receiving country has been identified for the hardest-to-place detainees, making closure impractical regardless of one's view of the underlying legal questions. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-pragmatic-skeptical-viewpoint.

• The torture and “enhanced interrogation” of detainees, including waterboarding, in CIA custody prior to transfer to Guantanamo, and its effect on subsequent prosecutions. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-torture-controversy.
• The 2024-2026 collapse of the plea agreements for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and co-defendants, including the dispute over Secretary Austin's authority to rescind them. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-ksm-plea-deal-controversy.
• Disputes over indefinite detention without charge of men cleared for release or never charged, and the difficulty of finding receiving countries for transfer. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-indefinite-detention-controversy.
• The 2025 repurposing of part of the base as a Migrant Operations Center for immigration detention, and objections to conflating it with the military prison. See guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-migrant-operations-center-controversy.

• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-history
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-national-security-viewpoint
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-civil-liberties-viewpoint
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-military-commissions-viewpoint
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-commission-illegitimacy-viewpoint
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-pragmatic-skeptical-viewpoint
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-habeas-corpus-debate
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-close-or-keep-open-viewpoint-debate
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-torture-controversy
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-ksm-plea-deal-controversy
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-indefinite-detention-controversy
• guantanamo-bay-detention-camp-migrant-operations-center-controversy
• September 11th Attacks
• United States of America - 21st Century History
• military-commissions-act-of-2006
• War On Terror

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