Trump
Says U.S. Will Hold Migrants at Guantánamo
The
president suggested 30,000 migrants could be housed on the base. It is unclear
how the plan will take shape.
Hamed
AleazizCarol Rosenberg
By Hamed
Aleaziz and Carol Rosenberg
Hamed
Aleaziz reported from Washington, and Carol Rosenberg reported from Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba.
Jan. 29,
2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/us/politics/trump-migrants-guantanamo.html
President
Trump on Wednesday ordered his administration to prepare to house tens of
thousands of “criminal aliens” at the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, the latest
prong in his widening crackdown on immigration.
Mr. Trump
did not offer details on how the plan would take shape, but he instructed the
Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to get the site ready.
“We have
30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens
threatening the American people,” he said. “Some of them are so bad we don’t
even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,
so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
He said the
move would “double our capacity immediately,” adding that Guantánamo was a
“tough place to get out of.”
In recent
weeks, about 40,000 immigrants have been held in private detention centers and
local jails around the country as funding constraints have limited the number
of detention sites.
Adding
30,000 beds would dramatically expand the government’s detention capacity. A
site on the 45-square-mile base could hold those 30,000 deportees. That site is
on the opposite side of the body of water called Guantánamo Bay from the
Pentagon’s prison for terrorism suspects.
Successive
administrations have prepared fields on a remote section, near the airfield but
far from the population center, to accommodate tens of thousands of migrants in
a sprawling tent city.
The
infrastructure was set up starting in the mid-2000s to shelter Cubans and
others from the region who had been intercepted while fleeing their country.
The Clinton administration had tasked Guantánamo with the role in the 1990s. It
was designed as a humanitarian relief operation.
It was not
immediately clear how such an operation under Mr. Trump would be staffed,
secured and what rights, if any, the deportees would have at Guantánamo Bay.
Civil liberties groups expressed concerns.
Vincent
Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said Mr.
Trump’s order sent a dark message that “migrants and asylum seekers are being
cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island
prison, removed from legal and social services and supports.”
Mr. Trump’s
memo called for expanding the Migrant Operations Center, which currently
occupies a small former barracks that has had capacity for up to 120 migrants
but in recent years held at most dozens at a time. It is near empty fields that
could be transformed into a tent city.
Tom Homan,
Mr. Trump’s border czar, told reporters outside the White House on Wednesday
that certain migrants could be flown to the island, and that the operation
would be run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE.
“The worst
of the worst, the significant public safety threats we can fly them,” he said.
U.S.
military and Homeland Security forces have periodically rehearsed how to handle
a migrant crisis at the site.
In the
1990s, the base was overwhelmed by more than 45,000 people fleeing crises in
both Haiti and Cuba. They were housed in crude tent cities on the populated
side of the base, including on the current site of the Pentagon’s detention
facility for detainees in the war against terrorism. Today, that facility
houses 15 prisoners and is staffed by 800 troops and civilians.
Starting
with the George W. Bush administration, the government created a new footprint
for a future humanitarian relief operation on the mostly empty side of the
base.
During
semiannual drills for a humanitarian relief operation, the Southern Command
typically flew in a few hundred soldiers from Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio
to play different roles.
The proposed
site of the tent camps could be surrounded with barbed wire, like the military
did for the tent camps of the 1990s, which housed both families and single men.
Deborah
Fleischaker, an ICE official during the Biden administration, said that
detaining immigrants at the base would be particularly difficult.
“Gitmo is
very small and very remote,” she said, using the military’s nickname for the
site. “Moving materials and people in and out would be a logistical nightmare.
And the makeup of who would be held there is very important. Only men? Women
and children? If women and children are there, the housing challenges become
even more difficult.”
In the last
week, the Trump administration has undertaken a sweeping blitz on immigration,
including arrests in communities across the country. Mr. Trump has promised to
conduct a historic mass deportation effort, but such a plan would need expanded
detention capabilities and more resources.
Since the
late 1990s, around 500 migrants have been resettled in third countries from
Guantánamo.
“Guantánamo
is a black hole designed to escape scrutiny and with a dark history of inhumane
conditions. It is a transparent attempt to avoid legal oversight that will
fail,” said Lucas Guttentag, a Justice Department official in the Biden
administration who once led the lawsuit over Haitian refugees being held at the
site.
Erica L.
Green contributed reporting from Washington.
Hamed
Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy. More
about Hamed Aleaziz
Carol
Rosenberg reports on the wartime prison and court at Guantánamo Bay. She has
been covering the topic since the first detainees were brought to the U.S. base
in 2002. More about Carol Rosenberg
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