President Donald Trump has unveiled plans to house 30,000 illegal migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. military base in Cuba has historically been used to hold terror suspects since 9/11 and current detainees include the accused mastermind of the attack.
Using it for migrants is the latest symbolic move in Trump’s unprecedented crackdown on illegal migration that began the moment he entered office last week.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has conducted raids across the country and deportation flights have left the United States daily – with the administration putting out images of the effort.
Trump said the facility with 30,000 beds will be used to keep the ‘worst of the worst’ migrants under lock and key, and noted how ‘tough’ it is to escape.
It will include suspects from countries he doesn’t trust will detain them when they are deported.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem floated the plan earlier on Wednesday, but Trump has now put the idea into motion.
‘Today, I’m also signing an Executive Order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000 person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,’ Trump said.
He made the announcement while signing the Laken Riley Act at the White House on Wednesday.
Trump added: ‘We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back.
‘So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo Bay. This will double our capacity immediately, and tough. That’s a tough – that’s a tough place to get out of.’
The George W. Bush administration opened the facility in 2002 to detain ‘illegal enemy combatants’ during the ‘War on Terror.’ Ultimately, successive administrations have negotiated a series of arrangements to transfer prisoners out of the facility since then, amid public and congressional pressure to close it.
The population has now dwindled to just 15 after the most recent series of transfers.
Among them is 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who agreed to plead guilty after negotiations with military lawyers, avoiding a potential death sentence, and setting off yet another legal saga.
Trump himself ordered his then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to keep Guantanamo open in 2018, reversing an Obama administration order.
Trump’s announcement came hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem floated the idea in a Fox News interview.
Guantanamo has a migrant facility that has been used for decades that is separate from the high-security prison area. It has been used to house Haitians fleeing storms and Cubans who don’t make it to the U.S. shore.
Trump’s move requires authorities to detain migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and are accused of other crimes, including misdemeanors.
The Venezuelan migrant who killed Laken Riley had entered the country illegally and been arrested for shoplifting and released.
Trump made the announcement after resolving a potential trade war with the government of Colombia.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro backed down after initially refusing to accept U.S. flights of deported Colombian nationals.
Trump said Colombia ‘apologized to us profusely within an hour.’ He recounted his threats, saying ‘you’re going to pay tariffs like nobody has every paid tariffs’ and told of how the country backtracked.
‘But they actually said that we’re going to send the presidential plane to pick up these criminals and to bring them because they didn’t want to inconvenience us or have us do a second flight,’ he said.
‘And that’s what they did it and I appreciate it, and I do appreciate the people of Colombia, they are wonderful people, and the representatives really acted well.
‘They are going to all take them back and they are going to like it, too. They are going like it,’ he said.
New White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt clashed with an NBC reporter at Tuesday’s White House press briefing over the number of ‘criminal’ aliens being sent home.
The network’s Peter Alexander asked about Trump’s comment that he would ‘start with the criminals’ before saying ‘nearly half’ of 1,179 migrants arrested ‘have no prior criminal record.’
Leavitt shot back that any foreign national who enters the US illegally is ‘by definition a criminal’ and ‘subject to deportation.’
The memorandum Trump signed directs the HHS secretary ‘to take all appropriate actions to expand’ the existing migrant operations center ‘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.’
It states that it is issued ‘in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.’
