WASHINGTON: The first US flights carrying detained migrants to America’s notorious Guantanamo military base in Cuba were underway Tuesday as President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on illegal migration, the White House said.
Guantanamo is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but the base also has a history of being used to hold migrants, and Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” there.
“Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business.
Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.
The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.
The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed.
The conditions there have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety.”
Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both sought to close the facility, but Congress has opposed efforts to shutter Guantanamo and it remains open to this day.
It still holds 15 people incarcerated for militant activity or terrorism-related offenses, among them several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But migrants will be detained in a separate part of the base.
According to US Southern Command, there are some 300 American military personnel at Guantanamo supporting “illegal alien holding operations.”
The base has for decades been used to hold Caribbean asylum seekers and refugees caught at sea, and was used in the 1990s to house tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans who fled crises in their homelands.
They were accommodated in tent cities, with many eventually sent home after being held at Guantanamo for years.
Thousands of undocumented migrants have been arrested since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, including some accused of crimes.
An unknown number have been repatriated to Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil and other countries, and Trump has vowed to expel millions.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday described Guantanamo as the “perfect place” to detain migrants as he visited the border with Mexico — an area where the Trump administration has boosted the country’s military presence in recent weeks.
The Pentagon will provide any necessary assets “to support the expulsion and detention of those in our country illegally,” Hegseth said.