Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Sunday rejected claims by immigrant rights groups that the Trump administration is trampling the rights of illegal immigrants it recently started holding at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Ms. Noem also said the critics who are sounding the alarm about “appalling” conditions at the facility are spreading lies and should “grow up.”
“That is just bull,” Ms. Noem said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Of course, we are giving due process to migrants.”
President Trump has faced stiff criticism after ordering the government to expand the capacity at Guantanamo Bay — known for detaining terrorists — to hold up to 30,000 migrants.
“The government cannot attempt to subvert the statutory and constitutional rights afforded to these noncitizens in the United States by transferring them to an offshore prison and holding them incommunicado without access to counsel or any means of contact with the outside world,” the American Civil Liberties Union them said Friday in a letter to the Trump administration.
The letter also highlighted a report on “appalling living conditions” such as a lack of “portable water, dilapidated housing with models, rates, overflowing showers and ‘toilets spewing sewage.’”
Ms. Noem said the claims are bogus. She said that the ACLU and other groups that have attacked the Trump administration’s approach to immigration should be more focused on helping the families whose children have been killed by illegal immigrants and finding the illegal immigrant children who failed to show up for their deportation hearings on former President Joseph R. Biden’s watch and been lost in the system.
“Why aren’t they out there fighting for them and saying, ‘Thank you, Mr. President, for making sure our kids are not going to continue to be killed by drugs and trafficking and have dangerous criminals robbing our small businesses in our hometowns,’” Ms. Noem said. “Get your priorities straight.”
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.