President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he plans to send detained migrants to Guantanamo Bay, the United States’ infamous military prison in Cuba.
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump added. “This will double our capacity immediately.”
Asked about the logistics of this announcement, newly confirmed Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem delivered this word-salad:
“You know, that is something that the white House is working on to use resources that we currently have there at Guantanamo Bay. So we will go through the process. The worst of the worst is where that could be utilized. So that potential is there. We know we need the infrastructure. We’re going after these guys.”
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” told reporters, “We’re just going to expand upon the existing migrant center.”
Homan is seemingly referring to the Guantanamo Migrant Operations Center, which has a capacity of 130 people, according to the Global Detention Project.
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How will such a massive expansion and detention be paid for?
“We’re working on that with reconciliation and appropriators in the House and Senate,” Noem said.
One of the last times Guantanamo Bay was in the news, it was where suspected terrorists were reportedly being tortured during President George W. Bush’s administration.
If Trump’s handling of the first two weeks of terrorizing immigrant groups in the country is any indication, we are potentially in for something much worse.
As he lies about the supposed successes of his deportation actions, the early ICE raids have been haphazard at best. At worst, it has functioned as targeted terror to American communities, both documented and undocumented. Recently, ICE raided a Newark, New Jersey, business and arrested an American citizen who was also a veteran.
At the same time, The Washington Post reports that Colombia’s president called into question Trump’s recent assertion that ICE agents deported 200 “Illegal Criminals” on a plane to the Andean country.
“The migrant is not a criminal, he is a free human being,” said President Gustavo Petro.
Petro added that of the 200 people deported by Trump’s ICE, 20 were children and two were pregnant women, according to the Post.
The racist, chaotic deportation plans that Trump wants to enact will now have its own concentration camp—just south of Florida.
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