Donald Trump said on Wednesday (29) that he plans to send up to 30,000 illegal immigrants to detention centers in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as part of his campaign to mass deport immigrants who have committed crimes.
“Today, I am also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the facility for immigrants in Guantánamo Bay,” Trump said.
“Most people don’t even know we have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst illegal foreign criminals who threaten the American people.”
Trump added that “some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust their countries to keep them, because we don’t want them to come back.”
“So we’re going to send them to Guantánamo,” he said.
“That will double our capacity immediately, right? And… it’s a tough place to get out of.”
The memorandum requires the Department of Defense and DHS to “take all appropriate actions to expand” the facilities “to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens present illegally in the United States.”
The United States has a long-term lease agreement with the Cuban government for a naval facility in Guantánamo Bay, which has housed terrorism suspects since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Only 15 terrorism suspects remain there, down from nearly 700 in 2003.
A small number of asylum seekers intercepted at sea are also currently housed in an immigrant facility on the 45-square-mile territory.
About 50,000 Haitians and Cubans were housed in Guantánamo from 1991 to 1996 — at a cost of about $250 million, according to The New York Times. Most Haitians had their asylum denied, while the opposite happened for Cubans.
Lawyers for terrorism suspects in Guantánamo said they expect litigation if Trump’s threat materializes — with potential deportees claiming lack of due process and access to courts, as well as allegedly substandard conditions and potential denial of access to justice.
Source: The New York Post