Everything you need to know about Guantánamo bay

President Donald Trump, who expulsion of immigrants A central part of his campaign and his presidency, said on Wednesday that the United States would use a detention center in Guantánamo bay, CubaTo contain tens of thousands of “worst criminal foreigners”.

“We are going to send them to Guantánamo,” said Trump when the LAKEN Riley Act.

He then signed a presidential memorandum and declared that he would order federal officials to illegally prepare the facilities to receive criminal immigrants in the United States. The Tom Homan border tsar told us Immigration and customs application would perform the installation. However, the details of the plan were not immediately clear.

Here is an overview of the American naval base, widely known as “Gitmo” and its history:

How does the US government use the base of Guantánamo Bay?

Although the American naval base in Cuba is best known for the suspects brought after the attacks of September 11, 2001, it has a small separate installation used for decades to hold migrants.

The migrant operations center is used for intercepted people trying to illegally reach the United States by boat. Most are Haiti and Cuba.

The center occupies a tiny part of the base, includes only a handful of buildings and does not find it difficult to host the 30,000 people that Trump could be sent there.

“We will simply develop this existing migrant center,” said Homan to journalists.

The migrant detention center operates separately from the military detention center and the hearing rooms for foreigners detained under President George W. Bush during what this administration called his “war against terrorism”. This installation houses 15 detainees, including the accused of the mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. It is down of its peak by almost 800.

Who will be detained in Guantánamo?

Guantánamo migrants’ detention facilities will be used for “the worst of the worst,” said administration officials.

Internal security secretary Kristi Noem and Homan both used the sentence when they speak to journalists outside the White House.

A declaration of the White House was less specific, claiming that the expanded installation “would provide additional detention space for criminal foreigners of high priority illegally present in the United States and to meet the needs for the application of immigration . “

An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak publicly about the issue, said that he would be used to house “dangerous criminals” and “difficult people to expel ”.

A number of countries refuse to accept certain immigrants that the United States is trying to deport.

Trump has spoke of the Americans who face the 11 million estimated immigrants living in the United States illegally. Although immigrants are regularly accused of having committed major crimes, they represent a small percentage of the global population. Academic studies evaluated by peers have generally found no connection between immigration and violent crimes, although the conclusions vary.

What else knows about the migrant operations center?

Not much. The international non -profit refugee assistance project said in a report last year that people were detained in “prison” conditions. He said they were “trapped in a punitive system” indefinitely, without any responsibility for the officials who execute it.

Deepa Alagesan, a main supervision lawyer for the group, said on Wednesday that they thought he was used to hold a small number of people-“two-digit,” she said.

The prospect of using it for many more immigrants concerned it.

“It is definitely a frightening perspective,” she said.

Do the United States have enough detention space for Trump’s plans?

Trump promised to expel millions of people illegally living in the United States, but the current immigration and customs budget has only enough funds to hold About 41,000 people.

Ice holds immigrants in its treatment centers and private detention facilities, as well as local prisons and prisons. It has no installation focused on the detention of families, which represent approximately a third of arrivals to the border in the southern United States.

During Trump’s first term, he authorized the use of military bases to have migrant children. In 2014, the president of the time, Barack Obama, temporarily relied on military bases to hold immigrant children while accelerating family detention centers to private origin to hold many tens of thousands of families Central America illegally took the crossing of the border.

The American military bases have been used several times since the 1970s to adapt to the resettlement of the waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

What do the lawyers of the September 11 cases say?

The decision to send immigrants to Guantánamo “should horrify us all,” said a defense group for legal defenders who, since the September 11 attacks, represented dozens of men detained at the base.

Trump’s order “sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are presented as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be rejected in an island prison, withdrawn from legal and social services and support”, Vince Warren , Executive Director of New York -the Center for Constitutional Rights based, said in a statement.

What is the reaction to Cuba?

The United States rented Guantánamo de Cuba for over a century. Cuba opposes the lease and generally rejects the nominal payments of American rent.

Government representatives criticized the news on Wednesday, President Miguel Díaz-Canel judging the decision “an act of brutality” on X and describing the base as “located in illegally occupied” territory “.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez, said on X: “The American government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantánamo naval base, in an enclave where she created centers of indefinite torture and detention, shows a outrage for the human condition and international law. ”

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Rebecca Santana and Ellen Knickmeyer’s associated press writers contributed from Washington.