US plans to send as many as 30,000 detained migrants to US Navy base in Guantanamo
Published in Political News
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to sign an executive order to ready a detention facility for migrants in the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that could hold as many as 30,000 people as his administration ramps up deportations.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” he said in remarks before signing the Laken Riley Act at the White House, which authorizes the detention of undocumented migrants accused of theft and other crimes before they are convicted.
“That’s a tough place to get out of,” he said.
Currently, the U.S. government has a facility in Guantanamo where some Cuban and Haitian migrants intercepted at sea by the U.S. Coast Guard await the result of their asylum cases. The State Department manages that facility, with assistance from the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. The Guantanamo facility came under fire during the Biden administration for human rights violations, a claim that the State Department has vehemently denied.
This is not the first time U.S. presidents have sought to use Guantanamo to detain thousands of migrants in Guantanamo. From August 1994 to February 1996, President Bill Clinton sent 30,000 Cubans and thousands of Haitians to the base after they were intercepted trying to reach U.S. shores on rafts.
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