Karoline Leavitt strongly criticized reports that suggest Donald Trump is getting ready to transfer thousands more undocumented immigrants to the well-known terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay starting this week.
‘This information is completely false. It’s not going to happen,’ stated the White House press secretary in an effort to dismiss reports regarding a potential significant escalation of Trump’s extensive crackdown on illegal immigration.
Back in February, Trump ordered members of the Armed Forces to the detention facility commonly referred to as ‘Gitmo’ in order to increase the capacity of the detention center situated at the base in Cuba.
Around 500 migrants have already been held at Guantanamo Bay’s prison for short stints over the past few months as they await transfer.
But then Politico reported midday on Tuesday that at least 9,000 people were identified for potential transfer to the prison as early as Wednesday, including Brits and other Europeans.
These reported holds would also be temporary, as it would be a pit stop on the way to being deported to the country from which they emigrated.
The report cited sources claiming that plans were meant to send a message to foreign countries that America is closed to migrants who aren’t willing to go through the legal process.
A State Department official told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that they did not think the reports had any validity to them.
Trump’s spokeswoman confirmed this on Wednesday morning in her post to X.
Donald Trump is set to send thousands more illegal migrants to the infamous terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay starting this week
In February, Trump deployed members of the Armed Forces to expand the capacity of a detention facility at the Cuba base
A document reportedly obtained by the outlet said that several hundred Europeans – including over a hundred Russians and Romanians – had the State Department on high alert.
‘The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people, but we’re allies,’ an anonymous State Department official familiar with the plans said to Politico.
The White House has already faces legal challenges to the policy.
The United States Navy announced that its combat ship USS St. Louis was moored at the Guantanamo Bay naval station and that the crew was supporting the expansion in February.
Photographs showed members of the armed forces setting up army green tents and pounding large stakes into the ground to hold them up.
The first phase of the expansion is expected to increase the center’s capacity to 2,000, according to the Navy, with plans to expand it to fit 30,000 migrants.
The detention facility is widely known as the location for detained terrorism suspects in recent years, but the Trump administration has decided to expand it’s use for detaining migrants scheduled for deportation.
Trump announced plans for his administration to detain as many as 30,000 high priority migrants with criminal records at the military base at Guantanamo Bay.
Legal experts stress that detainees at Guantanamo Bay will still have legal rights afforded to them by the Constitution, as the Supreme Court defended terror suspects right to habeas corpus and a lawyer.
‘The government’s view at that time was that Guantanamo was sort of outside the parameters of the U.S. Constitution, and whoever was there had no rights, whatever. And the Supreme Court rejected that,’ Eugene Fidell, Yale Law School military law expert noted.
‘We don’t want them coming back, so we’re sending them to Guantanamo,’ he said at the White House.
Currently, around 500 migrants have been held at the jail known as ‘Gitmo’ for short stints in the past few months
U.S. Navy sailors and Coast Guardsmen erect expeditionary shelter tents in support of the expansion of migrant detention at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
Trump’s border czar Tom Homan told reporters the administration would expand the capacity of the facility as the military has planned to erect temporary tents.
‘We’re just going to expand upon that existing migrant center,’ Homan said.
Secretary Kristi Noem shared photos of some of the migrants arriving at the Guantanamo facility.
‘President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst,’ she wrote on social media. ‘That starts today.’
