CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Nearly 200 Venezuelan immigrants to the U.S. were returned to their home country after being detained at Guantanamo Bay, in a flurry of flights that forged an unprecedented pathway for U.S. deportations.

On Feb. 7, he and other Venezuelan men in ICE detention in El Paso were awakened and told they were going back to Venezuela, Purroy Roldan said. They were transported to Miami and put aboard a military plane – and realized they were actually going to Guantanamo.

The United States has started sending more migrants deemed by officials to be “high threat” criminal aliens to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, just days after emptying out the base’s migrant facilities.

The base had been cleared of migrants since Thursday, after the government sent 177 to Venezuela and one back to the United States.

The number of troops being sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in support of migrant detention operations there continues to swell, with approximately 1,100 service members now deployed to the Navy base.

The U.S. government and a Venezuelan state airline flew 177 Venezuelan migrants from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras and on to Venezuela on Thursday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security said.

The US government flew 177 deportees from Guantánamo Bay to Honduras on Thursday. US border protection agency ICE said the deportees were then picked up and returned home by the Venezuelan government.