Trump says that migrants will send us to Guantánamo Bay: NPR

President Trump says that he plans to use a migrant detention center at the American naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 criminal migrants expelled from the United States.

In a white house noteHe ordered the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to start this process to “stop the invasion of the borders, dismantle criminal cartels and restore national sovereignty”.

The Trump administration said that migrants expelled would not be detained in the US military prison in Guantánamo, which now houses suspicious foreign terrorists, including the alleged brain of September 11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Instead, he said, they would be held in a separate area of ​​the naval part of Guantánamo, which for decades has had a detention center for migrants intercepted at sea, mainly Haitians, Cubans and Dominicans.

This establishment has been widely empty for years, and Trump said that he wanted to use it to shelter it to “shelter” high priority criminal foreigners “.

The Trump administration announced Fox News on Wednesday, internal security secretary, Kristi Noem, and defense secretary Pete Hegseth sharing details on the plan.

Hegseth said migrants would not be held indefinitely – as they are in Guantánamo military prison, where some prisoners have been for two decades without being charged. He said Guantánamo would be a “standing station” for them until the administration finds that other countries take them.

“These are not the camps. You do not put criminals in camps where the Islamic State and other criminals (are),” he said. “This is a temporary transit … where we can more upset thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to keep the illegals away from our country, where they do not belong to the countries where they come in an appropriate process.

The Trump administration has not defined how long it considers a “temporary transit”.

It is not clear if the current installation of the migrants of Guantánamo has enough space for 30,000 people. When Trump announced his plan for the first time, he said it was: “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to hold the worst illegal criminals threatening the American people,” he said. “Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them to come back, so we will send them to Guantánamo.”

But Trump later said that he intended to “develop” the installation at “full capacity”.

Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said that he is experiencing migrant reports that have been detained at the Guantánamo detention center according to which “there were not 30,000 beds (there) for decades” .

“The installation is decrepit. It collapsed. It is in poor condition,” added Warren, “and, in practice, the conditions that would be created if people went there around the conditions of their confinement while They are expelled.

Warren acknowledged that the United States had the right to deport people with certain criminal convictions and that the Trump administration has expanded the types of criminal convictions for which people are expelled.

But, Warren added: “This 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 mind. This is not something that Human rights law would allow. “

Secretary Hegseth also said that a golf course on the naval base would have room for 6,000 expelled migrants, so the Trump administration seems to try to identify different spaces in Guantánamo which could provide room to Tens of thousands of people.

The administration did not say how much its plan could cost. But that would require construction; food and accommodation for people who are held there; guards or staff to supervise the establishment; and transport to bring migrants.

Trump’s Tsar Frontier Tom Homan said migrants would be advanced directly. Internal security secretary Noem said that immigration and customs application would manage the installation. And she said that the congress would appropriate money for all this.

The administration did not say when the deportations of migrants to Guantánamo could begin.