Trump to sign order for migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay
January 29, 2025
US President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the Defense Department to establish facilities to house 30,000 deported migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
He announced the move during a ceremony in which he signed another immigration detention measure into law called the Laken Riley Act.
Trump said the "migrant facility" at Guantanamo Bay will be used 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.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said his department can set up a detention center "very rapidly" and called Guantanamo Bay "a perfect spot."
Trump's promise to increase deportations
During his 2024 campaign for president, Trump promised to significantly curtail immigration and strengthen border controls.
Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders targeting the border and law enforcement since taking office, with the administration making his orders highly visible, for example, by portraying photos of US military planes carrying migrants touching down in Central America.
Even though similar deportations also took place under the Biden administration, the US did not use military planes.
Trump said at the signing of the immigration-related bill on Wednesday that some of the people being sent back to their home countries couldn’t be counted on to stay there.
"Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re gonna send ’em out to Guantanamo," Trump said.
Guantanamo Bay gained notoriety for accusations of torture
The Guantanamo Bay military prison was opened in January 2002 on a US Naval base located in southeastern Cuba.
The George W. Bush administration, as it carried out its war on terrorism in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, chose the facility to detain individuals apprehended by the US.
The Bush administration chose the facility because of its unique position since it was under US control, but it was not technically inside the US.
But the hundreds of people who were sent to Guantanamo Bay eventually entered a murky territory where they had no legal rights.
Over the years, prisoners's physical treatment, with accusations of interrogation through torture, and the US government's legal contortion to hold hundreds without charge sparked international outcry including from the United Nations.
ftm/rm (AFP, AP)