What's Next For Guantánamo Bay? Under Trump, Cuba Prison Is 'Important Tool'

President Donald Trump was planning to keep the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay open, top White House aides said Wednesday. The plans for the facility in Cuba were consistent with his campaign promises last year.

“The president has been really explicit ... that Gitmo is a very, very important tool,” Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to the president, said on Fox News. “Beyond just the question of detention facilities or tribunals, it’s also important to understand that Guantánamo Bay is an incredibly important intelligence asset.”

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer also said that Guantánamo Bay would remain open.

“As the President has said very clearly before, we don’t telegraph what we’re gonna do — I think he has made it very clear though, that he believes that Guantánamo Bay does serve a very, very healthy purpose in our national security and making sure that we don’t bring terrorists to our seas,” Spicer said Tuesday. “But I’m not gonna get into what we may or may not do in the future.”

In contrast, former President Obama felt differently about the detention center. Before he was elected, he promised to close the facility. In fact, Obama vowed during his first presidential campaign to shut it down and has said the facility was used as a recruitment tool for extremists.

"I am going to get my team to review everything that is currently being done in Guantánamo … everything that we can do administratively. I am going to re-engage with Congress to try and make the case that [Guantánamo] is not in the best interests of the American people," he said in 2008.

Still, the facility remained opened. A day before Trump’s inauguration, Obama transferred four Guantánamo detainees to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. Forty-one detainees were left behind, according to ABC News.

"We have transferred 196 detainees from Guantánamo with arrangements designed to keep them from engaging in acts that pose a threat to the United States and our allies," the Obama administration wrote in its final report to Congress. "Of the nearly 800 detainees at one time held at the facility, today only 41 remains.”