In recent years, Lee's political ambitions have been saddled with even more pressing controversies - including the ongoing legal cases that continue to hang over him, threatening to hamstring if not scuttle his chances at election.
It's unclear how many migrants remain at the facility. Stephen Miller - the White House deputy chief of staff - insisted in an interview with Fox News last week that the base remained open and that "a large number of foreign terrorist aliens" were still there.The White House failed to reply to a request for comment on whether removal of the tents represented a reversal of Trump's plans to expand the detention facility.
Despite Trump's pledge to send 30,000 migrants to the base, a US defence official indicated that the deployment to the island was to support a population of 2,500 detainees.BBC Verify's analysis of likely tent capacity estimated it at less than 3,000 people, based on US military sleeping guidelines.Trump said in January that the expansion would largely be used to hold undocumented migrants deemed to be dangerous criminals or national security risks.
"Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them, because we don't want them coming back," he said of migrants. "So we're going to send them to Guantanamo... it's a tough place to get out."But since its inception two and a half months ago, around 400 migrants have reportedly been sent there, with more than half since returned to facilities in the US. Others have been deported, such as 177 people who were sent to Venezuela via Honduras on 20 February.
On 28 March, a group of five Democrat senators visited the base. In a statement, they said they were "outraged by the scale and wastefulness of the Trump Administration's misuse of our military", and described the camp as "seemingly designed to undermine due process and evade legal scrutiny".
The delegation of senators said the cost to fly immigrants out of the US and detain them at Guantanamo Bay came to "tens of millions of dollars a month" and called it "an insult to American taxpayers".Creon, a pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (Pert), helps digestion and is required by patients with pancreatic cancer, cystic fibrosis, and chronic pancreatitis. It is thought more than 61,000 patients in the UK need the medicine.
Some patients are said to be "skipping meals" to ration their medication due to a shortage of it, according to the National Pharmacy Association (NPA).A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there were "European-wide supply issues" and it was "working closely with industry and the NHS" to mitigate the impact on patients.
Without the drug, patients lose weight and strength, which means their ability to cope with treatment such as chemotherapy is reduced.Some experts have predicted shortages continuing until next year.