WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a memo initiating the preparations for constructing a facility to house thousands of migrants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States,” the memo to the Pentagon and DHS states.
During a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure, Trump announced that he would “instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to commence preparations for the establishment of a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay.”
“We don’t want them coming back,” Trump said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”
“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump added.
According to five defense officials, Trump’s announcement caught several officials at the Pentagon off guard.
Currently, the exact number of beds available for migrants at Guantanamo and the duration of the mission remain uncertain. Officials are also unsure whether the military will be involved in the operation and have stated that there are no plans to upgrade military facilities at Guantánamo.
The Global Detention Project, a research center that champions detainees’ rights, proposes on its website that the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center has a maximum capacity of 130 detainees.
The Guantanamo Bay detention center, established in 2002, has been used to hold hundreds of individuals suspected of terrorism and other crimes.
The move comes as Trump works to fulfill his campaign promise of fixing the situation at the Southern Border. He declared a national emergency at the border and signed executive orders intended to shutdown illegal immigration and deport millions of people who crossed into the United States illegally.
