US President Trump to transfer undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo

Donald Trump has made it known that he intends to convert Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into a detention facility for undocumented immigrants.

The surprise announcement came on Wednesday, as the Republican president signed his first major piece of legislation, the Laken Riley Act.

Trump had promised to lead a “mass deportation” campaign against the nearly 11 million undocumented people living in the US when he ran for president for a second term. Many have been in the country for decades, serving as pillars for their families and communities.

The Laken Riley Act dovetailed with the Trump administration’s push to expel as many undocumented individuals as possible.

Under the law’s provisions, the Department of Homeland Security is required to detain non-citizens unlawfully in the US who are either arrested or charged with burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. Regardless of whether they are found guilty of a crime, those individuals may then be deported.

But as Trump spoke to an audience at the White House about the act, he pivoted to a new announcement: a new use for the Guantanamo facility.

I’m also signing an executive order today to direct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin constructing the Guantanamo Bay, which has a population of 30,000. Most people don’t even know about it”, Trump said.

Calls for prison to close

Guantanamo Bay detention center has long been the subject of calls from human rights organizations, citing inadequate legal protections and inhumane treatment there.

In 2022, a group of experts from the UN referred to Guantanamo as an “ugly chapter” in US history as “the practice of 20 years of practising arbitrary detention without trial accompanied by torture or ill treatment is simply unacceptable for any government.

Many detainees were detained for years without a trial at the facility, which was established in 2002 as a staging area for suspects seized in the so-called “war on terror” in the US.

A smaller number of detainees were imprisoned inside the facility’s wall earlier this month, marking its 23rd anniversary. Only 15 detainees remain in the facility as a result of President Joe Biden’s incoming administration’s recent transfer of prisoners to other nations.

Prior to the closure of the prison, President Barack Obama intended to end it. However, Trump signed an executive order to keep Guantanamo Bay open for the time being during his first year in office.

He has long sought to expand US use of the facility, including through the transfer of new detainees.

That vision started to take shape with Wednesday’s announcement, less than two weeks into his second term.

Trump remarked, “We have 30, 000 beds in Guantanamo to deten 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”.

A hardline approach

Despite studies consistently demonstrating that undocumented people commit crimes at a significantly lower rate than US-born citizens, the Republican leader has long equated immigration with criminality.

His campaign for re-election in 2024, however, hinged on the premise that the US needed to fend off a “migrant invasion”, citing incidents like the Laken Riley case as examples.

Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student at the University of Georgia, was killed in February 2024 while out for a jog. The undocumented immigrant who had previously been detained for shoplifting was the man who was found guilty of her death.

Riley’s mother, Allyson Phillips, spoke at Wednesday’s event, just before Trump signed her daughter’s namesake bill. Between tears, she thanked the US president.

“There’s no amount of tears that will ever bring back our precious Laken”, she said. We anticipate that her life will save lives going forward.

Trump attributed the bill to his claim that Guantanamo served a similar purpose and that it should be used as a detention facility for immigrants.

He said, “Today’s signings bring us one step closer to ending migrant crime in our communities permanently.”

Trump has however been accused of inciting nativist sentiments against immigrants and pursuing a hardline crackdown that threatens to impede the exercise of asylum and other rights.

Whether Trump has the resources and manpower to carry out his “mass deportation” plan has also drawn criticism from critics. Trump, however, said on Wednesday that the use of Guantanamo would “double” immigration detention capacity.

Nayna Gupta, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit, dismissed his announcement as an act of desperation.

Source: Aljazeera