{"id":23791,"date":"2025-01-30T19:05:30","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T02:05:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-to-know-about-guantanamo-bay-the-base-where-trump-will-send-criminal-aliens\/"},"modified":"2025-01-31T02:05:30","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T02:05:30","slug":"what-to-know-about-guantanamo-bay-the-base-where-trump-will-send-criminal-aliens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-to-know-about-guantanamo-bay-the-base-where-trump-will-send-criminal-aliens\/","title":{"rendered":"What to know about Guant\u00e1namo Bay, the base where Trump will send \u2018criminal aliens\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

FILE - In this photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, a building in Cuba carries the Spanish message \"Republic of Cuba. Free American Territory,\" behind a gate marking the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, June 6, 2018. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa, File)
FILE \u2013 In this photo reviewed by U.S. military officials, a building in Cuba carries the Spanish message \"Republic of Cuba. Free American Territory,\" behind a gate marking the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba, June 6, 2018. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa, File)<\/span>Ramon Espinosa<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump, who made the deportation of immigrants a central part of his campaign and presidency, said Wednesday that the U.S. will use a detention center at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of the \u201cworst criminal aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to send them out to Guant\u00e1namo,\u201d Trump said at the signing of the Laken Riley Act.<\/p>\n

He later signed a presidential memorandum and said he\u2019d direct federal officials to get facilities ready to receive criminal immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Border czar Tom Homan said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would run the facility. Still, details of the plan weren\u2019t immediately clear.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a look at the U.S. naval base, widely known as \u201cGitmo,\u201d and its history:<\/p>\n

How does the U.S. government use the base at Guant\u00e1namo Bay?<\/div>\n

While the U.S. naval base in Cuba is best known for the suspects brought in after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, it has a small, separate facility used for decades to hold migrants.<\/p>\n

The Migrant Operations Center is used for people intercepted trying to illegally reach the U.S. by boat. Most are from Haiti and Cuba.<\/p>\n

The center takes up a tiny part of the base, includes just a handful of buildings and has nowhere near the capacity to house the 30,000 people Trump said could be sent there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just going to expand upon that existing migrant center, Homan told reporters.<\/p>\n

The migrant detention center operates separately from the military\u2019s detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under President George W. Bush during what that administration called its \u201cwar on terror.\u201d That facility houses 15 detainees, including accused 9\/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. That\u2019s down from its peak of nearly 800.<\/p>\n

Who will be held at Guant\u00e1namo?<\/div>\n

The migrant detention facilities at Guant\u00e1namo will be used for \u201cthe worst of the worst,\u201d administration officials said.<\/p>\n

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Homan both used the phrase when speaking to reporters outside the White House.<\/p>\n

A White House statement was less specific, saying the expanded facility would \u201cprovide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren\u2019t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said it would be used to house \u201cdangerous criminals\u201d and people who are \u201chard to deport.\u201d<\/p>\n

A number of countries refuse to accept some immigrants the U.S. tries to deport.<\/p>\n

Trump has repeatedly spoken about the dangers Americans face from the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally. While immigrants are regularly charged with committing major crimes, they are a tiny percentage of the overall population. Peer-reviewed academic studies have generally found no link between immigration and violent crime, though conclusions vary.<\/p>\n

What else is known about the Migrant Operations Center?<\/div>\n

Not much. The nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project said in a report last year that people are held in \u201cprison-like\u201d conditions. It said they were \u201ctrapped in a punitive system\u201d indefinitely, with no accountability for the officials running it.<\/p>\n

Deepa Alagesan, a senior supervising attorney with the group, said Wednesday that they believed it is used to hold a small number of people \u2013 \u201cin the double digits,\u201d she estimated.<\/p>\n

The prospect of using it for far more immigrants worried her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely a scary prospect,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Does the U.S. have sufficient detention space for Trump\u2019s plans?<\/div>\n

Trump has vowed to deport millions of people living illegally in the U.S., but the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget only has enough funds to detain about 41,000 people.<\/p>\n

ICE detains immigrants at its processing centers and privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and jails. It has no facilities geared toward the detention of families, who account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, he authorized the use of military bases to detain migrant children. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families caught illegally crossing the border.<\/p>\n

U.S. military bases have been used repeatedly since the 1970s to accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

What do lawyers in Sept. 11 cases say?<\/div>\n

The decision to send immigrants to Guant\u00e1namo \u201cshould horrify us all,\u201d said a legal advocacy group that since the Sept. 11 attacks has represented dozens of men detained at the base.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s order \u201csends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports,\u201d Vince Warren, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement.<\/p>\n

What is the reaction in Cuba?<\/div>\n

The U.S. has leased Guant\u00e1namo from Cuba for more than a century. Cuba opposes the lease and typically rejects the nominal U.S. rent payments.<\/p>\n

Government officials criticized the news Wednesday, with President Miguel D\u00edaz-Canel deeming the decision \u201can act of brutality\u201d on X and describing the base as \u201clocated in illegally occupied #Cuba territory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Foreign Minister Bruno Rodr\u00edguez said on X, \u201cThe U.S. government\u2019s decision to imprison migrants at the Guant\u00e1namo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture and indefinite detention centers, shows contempt for the human condition and international law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed from Washington.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tom Homan says ICE would run the facility<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-23791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23791"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=23791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}