US President Donald Trump has ordered the development of a migrant detention facility in Guantanamo Bay which he mentioned would maintain as many as 30,000 individuals.
He mentioned the ability on the US Navy base in Cuba, which might be separate from its high-security navy jail, would home “the worst prison unlawful aliens threatening the American individuals”.
Guantanamo Bay has lengthy been used to accommodate immigrants, a follow that has been criticised by some human rights teams.
Afterward Wednesday, Trump’s “border tsar” Tom Homan mentioned the present facility there could be expanded and run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
He mentioned the migrants could possibly be transported there straight after being intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard, and that the “highest” detention requirements could be utilized.
It’s unclear how a lot the ability will value or when it might be accomplished.
Cuba’s authorities swiftly condemned the plan, accusing the US of torture and unlawful detention on “occupied” land.
Trump’s announcement got here as he signed the so-called Laken Riley Act into legislation, which requires undocumented immigrants who’re arrested for theft or violent crimes to be held in jail pending trial.
The invoice, named after a Georgia nursing pupil who was murdered final yr by a Venezuelan migrant, was accredited by Congress final week, an early legislative win for the administration.
At a signing ceremony within the East Room of the White Home, Trump mentioned the brand new Guantanamo government order would instruct the departments of defence and homeland safety to “start making ready” the 30,000-bed facility.
“A few of them are so unhealthy we do not even belief the international locations to carry them, as a result of we do not need them coming again,” he mentioned of migrants. “So we will ship them to Guantanamo… it is a powerful place to get out.”
In keeping with Trump, the ability will double the US capability to carry undocumented migrants.
The US has already been utilizing a facility in Guantanamo – generally known as the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Heart (GMOC) – for many years and thru numerous administrations, each Republican and Democrat.
In a 2024 report, the Worldwide Refugee Help Challenge (IRAP) accused the federal government of secretly holding migrants there in “inhumane” circumstances indefinitely after detaining them at sea.
The GMOC has principally housed migrants picked up at sea and was lately the topic of a Freedom of Data request by the American Civil Liberties Union for the disclosure of information in regards to the website.
The Biden Administration responded that it “is just not a detention facility and not one of the migrants there are detained”.
The Trump administration, nonetheless, says the deliberate expanded facility may be very a lot meant as a detention centre.
It will reportedly ask Congress to fund the growth of the present detention facility as a part of a spending invoice Republicans are working to assemble.
When requested by reporters on the White Home, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem mentioned solely that the cash could be allotted by way of “reconciliation and appropriations”.
The navy jail on Guantanamo has, for many years, held detainees taken into US custody after the 9/11 assaults on the US in 2001.
At its peak it held lots of of prisoners, and several other Democratic presidents together with Barack Obama have vowed to shut it. There are 15 prisoners at the moment being held there.
Information of the ability’s growth was met with swift condemnation by the Cuban authorities, which has lengthy thought-about Guantanamo Bay to be “occupied” and has denounced the existence of a US naval base on the island ever since Fidel Castro swept to energy in 1959.
“In act act of brutality, the brand new authorities of the US has introduced it should incarcerate, on the naval base at Guantanamo, positioned in illegally occupied Cuban territory, hundreds of forcibly expulsed migrants, who might be positioned close to identified prisons of torture and unlawful detention,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X.
The Cuban Overseas Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, mentioned the announcement confirmed “contempt for the human situation and worldwide legislation”.
