US President Donald Trump has announced an expansive directive granting federal authorities the ability to deport up to 30,000 undocumented immigrants with criminal records to a designated detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
In a memorandum from the White House, Trump instructed the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to initiate the process of detaining “criminal migrants” in order to “halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
The administration clarified that the deported migrants would not be placed in the military prison at Guantanamo, which has gained notoriety for holding foreign terrorism suspects and has faced intense scrutiny from human rights organizations.
Instead, the plan involves utilizing a separate section of the naval station historically employed as a temporary detention site for migrants intercepted at sea, particularly from Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic.
Details surrounding the plan emerged during a Fox News broadcast featuring key figures from Trump’s administration, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth emphasized that the migrants would not face indefinite detention akin to that experienced by individuals in the military prison, where some have been held for over two decades without formal charges.
He described Guantanamo as “a temporary transit” to move illegals out of the US without clarifying what “temporary transit” means regarding its duration.
Trump’s initial announcement indicated that Guantanamo could accommodate 30,000 individuals, emphasizing the facility’s potential for “full capacity” expansion.
He expressed concerns about certain migrants, asserting, “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 Guantanamo.”
However, this initiative has drawn scepticism from various quarters. Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, raised concerns over the facility’s conditions, labelling it “decrepit” and questioning the legality of using Guantanamo for this purpose.
He argued that while the US has the right to deport individuals with specific criminal convictions, “it does not give the United States the right to put them in a legal black hole in an offshore prison just to get them out of sight and out of mind. That’s not something that human rights law would allow.”
Cuba’s government was quick to denounce the proposal, accusing the US of engaging in torture and unlawful detention on the country’s land which has been “occupied.”
Havana has denounced the existence of a US naval base on the island ever since Fidel Castro swept to power in 1959.
“In act of brutality, the new government of the US has announced it will incarcerate, at the naval base at Guantanamo, located in illegally occupied Cuban territory, thousands of forcibly expulsed migrants, who will be located near known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X.
Trump’s announcement coincided with his signing of the Laken Riley Act, which mandates that undocumented immigrants arrested for theft or violent crimes be held in jail while awaiting trial, further underscoring the administration’s tough stance on immigration issues.
