Trump says he will send some migrants to Guantanamo Bay

The president of the United States, Donald Trump, ordered the construction of a migrant detention center in Guantanamo Bay, which, according to him, would have up to 30,000 people.

He said that the installation at the US Navy base. Uu. In Cuba, which would be separated from its high security military prison, it would house “illegal criminal foreigners who threaten the US people.”

Guantanamo Bay has been used for a long time to accommodate immigrants, a practice that has been criticized by some human rights groups.

Later, on Wednesday, Trump’s “border tsar”, Tom Homan, said the existing facilities there would expand and administer for the application of immigration and customs (ICE).

He said that migrants could be transported directly after being intercepted in the sea by the United States Coast Guard, and that “higher” detention standards would apply.

It is not clear how much the installation will cost or when it will be completed.

The Government of Cuba quickly condemned the plan, accusing the United States of illegal torture and detention in “occupied” lands.

Trump’s announcement occurred when he signed the so -called Laken Riley law, which requires undocumented immigrants arrested for robbery or violent crimes held in jail pending trial.

The bill, named for a Georgia nursing student who was killed last year by a Venezuelan migrant, was approved by Congress last week, an early legislative victory for the administration.

In a signature ceremony in the East Room of the White House, Trump said that the new executive order of Guantanamo would instruct the departments of National Defense and Security that “begin preparing” the facilities of 30,000 beds.

“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust countries to maintain them, because we don’t want them to return,” he said about migrants. “So we will send them to Guantanamo … it is a difficult place to leave.”

According to Trump, the installation will double the ability of the United States to maintain undocumented migrants.

The United States has already been using an installation in Guantanamo, known as the Guantanamo (GMOC) migrant operations center, for decades and through several administrations, both Republican and Democrats.

In a 2024 report, the International Refugee Assistance Project (Irap) accused the government of keeping migrants in “inhuman” indefinitely after stopping them at sea.

The GMOC has mainly housed the migrants collected in the sea and was recently subject to a request for freedom of information by the American Union of Civil Liberties for the dissemination of records on the site.

The Biden administration replied that “it is not a detention center and that none of the migrants is stopped.”

However, the Trump administration says that the planned expanded installation is very destined as a detention center.

According to the reports, he will ask the Congress to finance the expansion of the existing detention center as part of an expense bill that Republicans are working to meet.

When the White House journalists asked him, the Secretary of National Security, Kristi Noem, said only that money would be assigned through “reconciliation and appropriation.”

The military prison in Guantanamo, for decades, kept the detainees arrested for custody of the United States after September 11 attacks to the United States in 2001.

At its peak had hundreds of prisoners, and several democratic presidents, including Barack Obama, have promised to close it. They currently stop 15 prisoners.

The news of the expansion of the installation was received with a rapid conviction by the Cuban government, which for a long time has considered that Guantanamo Bay was “occupied” and has denounced the existence of a naval base of the United States on the island Since Fidel Castro swept power in 1959.

“In Act of Brutaly, the new US government. of known prisons of torture and illegal.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez said the announcement showed “contempt for human condition and international law.”