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.
US flights carrying detained migrants to Guantanamo ‘underway’
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US flights carrying detained migrants to Guantanamo ‘underway’
- Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt: ‘Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway’
- Guantanamo still holds 15 people incarcerated for militant activity, among them several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, including mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Italian police fire tear gas as protesters clash near Winter Olympics hockey venue
- Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue
MILAN: Italian police fired tear gas and a water cannon at dozens of protesters who threw firecrackers and tried to access a highway near a Winter Olympics venue on Saturday.
The brief confrontation came at the end of a peaceful march by thousands against the environmental impact of the Games and the presence of US agents in Italy.
Police held off the violent demonstrators, who appeared to be trying to reach the Santagiulia Olympic ice hockey rink, after the skirmish. By then, the larger peaceful protest, including families with small children and students, had dispersed.
Earlier, a group of masked protesters had set off smoke bombs and firecrackers on a bridge overlooking a construction site about 800 meters (a half-mile) from the Olympic Village that’s housing around 1,500 athletes.
Police vans behind a temporary metal fence secured the road to the athletes’ village, but the protest veered away, continuing on a trajectory toward the Santagiulia venue. A heavy police presence guarded the entire route.
There was no indication that the protest and resulting road closure interfered with athletes’ transfers to their events, all on the outskirts of Milan.
The demonstration coincided with US Vice President JD Vance’s visit to Milan as head of the American delegation that attended the opening ceremony on Friday.
He and his family visited Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” closer to the city center, far from the protest, which also was against the deployment of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to provide security to the US delegation.
US Homeland Security Investigations, an ICE unit that focuses on cross-border crimes, frequently sends its officers to overseas events like the Olympics to assist with security. The ICE arm at the forefront of the immigration crackdown in the US is known as Enforcement and Removal Operations, and there is no indication its officers are being sent to Italy.
At the larger, peaceful demonstration, which police said numbered 10,000, people carried cardboard cutouts to represent trees felled to build the new bobsled run in Cortina. A group of dancers performed to beating drums. Music blasted from a truck leading the march, one a profanity-laced anti-ICE anthem.
“Let’s take back the cities and free the mountains,” read a banner by a group calling itself the Unsustainable Olympic Committee. Another group called the Association of Proletariat Excursionists organized the cutout trees.
“They bypassed the laws that usually are needed for major infrastructure project, citing urgency for the Games,” said protester Guido Maffioli, who expressed concern that the private entity organizing the Games would eventually pass on debt to Italian taxpayers.
Homemade signs read “Get out of the Games: Genocide States, Fascist Police and Polluting Sponsors,” the final one a reference to fossil fuel companies that are sponsors of the Games. One woman carried an artificial tree on her back decorated with the sign: “Infernal Olympics.”
The demonstration followed another last week when hundreds protested the deployment of ICE agents.
Like last week, demonstrators Saturday said they were opposed to ICE agents’ presence, despite official statements that a small number of agents from an investigative arm would be present in US diplomatic territory, and not operational on the streets.
