Not for the first time the U.S. federal government will turn to its agreed-upon lease with the Cuban government for a place to house migrants bound for or prohibited from staying in the United States.
President Donald Trump, late Wednesday, issued a memorandum instructing Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to prepare Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, to receive up to 30,000 illegal immigrant detainees.
“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, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security,” Trump wrote in his memorandum.
The decision comes as Trump attempts the “largest mass deportation” event in U.S. history, with an eye toward fulfilling a campaign promise of ejecting upwards of 11 million people thought to be residing in U.S. territory without lawful presence.
The military’s oldest overseas base, going forward, will be used to house the “worst criminal aliens,” according to the 45th and 47th U.S. President, and expanding the facility to house tens of thousands of detainees will not cost “very much.”
“A lot of the structure is already there, as you know,” Trump told pool reporters on Thursday.
Hegseth says he’s been in contact with the commander of U.S. Southern Command and Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to discuss expansion of the naval station to meet the president’s demands.
“That is ongoing. We’re leaning forward on supporting the president’s directive to make sure that we have a location for violent criminal illegals as they are deported out of the country. No one is going to wait on the Defense Department and we’re working that in real time,” Hegseth said.
The facility, as currently equipped, is not built to house as many deportees as Trump has suggested might be sent there. Speaking to reporters outside of the White House on Wednesday, Noem said that issue is already being seen to.
“We’re already doing it,” Noem said. “We’re building it out.”
This is not the first time that the federal government has used the site — officially known as Naval Station Guantanamo Bay but more commonly referred to as “Gitmo” — in the more-than-a century since it was first opened in 1903.
“There’s already a migrant center there. It’s been there for decades. So we’re just going to expand upon that existing migrant center,” Border Czar Tom Homan said.
In recent years the base has been used as a holding facility for those suspected of helping to facilitate the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Fifteen detainees apprehended over the decades encompassing the “War on Terror” begun under former President George W. Bush’s Administration still remain there.
Gitmo held more than tens of thousands of Haitian “boat people” fleeing unrest leading up and after military coup in the early 1990s. After most of those detainees were eventually repatriated, a few years later it was used to house both Cuban and Haitian refugees, eventually reaching a population of around 50,000.
According to Hegseth, a former U.S Army officer who spent time at the detention facility there, the Migrant Operations Center at Guantanamo can be expanded to its past size for the “detention space for high-priority criminal aliens we have deported.”
“Gitmo has been used for decades, including under Democrat presidents like Bill Clinton, to temporarily house migrants. This is not the detention facilities (where I served) for Al Qaeda; this is using specific facilities for migrants/illegals on other parts of the naval station,” Hegseth said via social media.
“We don’t want criminal illegals on our soil; they need to go home. Using Gitmo will facilitate that. It’s the perfect location,” he said.
Former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both expressed their intentions to close the facilities at Guantanamo Bay, but neither was able to carry through with their plans.
Cuban’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said via social media that his nation “rejects the decision announced by the US President to use the Naval Base in Guantanamo to imprison tens of thousands of migrants who are intended to be forcibly expelled. That territory does not belong to the US. It is a portion of occupied Cuban territory illegally against our will.”
Herald wire services contributed.
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