A government memorandum obtained by CBS News shows that the Trump administration created broad rules that describe what migrants can be celebrated In Guantanamo BayAllowing officials to send non -criminal stops despite a vote of maintaining “the worst” criminals in the naval base.
As part of his aggressive offensive against immigration, President Trump at the end of January ordered officials to convert facilities within the US Naval Base. UU. In the Bay of Guantanamo, Cuba, in places of celebration of migrants who live illegally in the country. At that time, Mr. Trump Said “the worst” migrants It would be a hero at the base, ordering officials to make space for “high priority criminal foreigners.”
But an unintentionally revealed agreement between the Department of National Security and the Department of Defense indicates that the Trump Administration gave officials broad discretion to decide to decide Who to send to Guantanamo Baypromulgating criteria not based on the severity of the history or criminal conduct of Detatease. In fact, the MEMO does not mention any crime evaluation. [Read the full memo at the bottom of this story.]
On the other hand, the agreement, signed on March 7 by the main officials of the DHS and the Pentagon, says that the departments agreed to use the Guantanamo base to stop migrants with final deportation orders that have “a link for a transnational criminal organization (TCO) or criminal.”
The officials defined “Nexus” in general terms. A link can be satisfied, says the memorandum, if migrants with final deportation orders are part of a transnational criminal group or if they paid one “to be smuggled in the United States.” The condition of the letter could be used to describe many of the migrants and asylum seekers who have illegally crossed the southern border of the United States, since the criminal groups in Mexico greatly control the movement of the illegal movement of people and drugs there.
Migrants who overcome a visa are not eligible to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, says the document. But if the nature of the entrance of a migrant is not clear, the memorandum allows officials to assume that the person paid a criminal group to enter the USA. And send them to Guantanamo if it has a nation “where the Stathy Andter Cythion Condttcat unit was born with the contants of our Born Condtcat Morat Bornness” “” “
The conditions to transfer migrants to Guantanamo, as described in the memorandum, seem to disagree with the statements of Mr. Trump and the high -ranking members of their administration who have suggested that the base would be used as a site of detention for dangerous criminals.
Teresa Cardinal Brown, a former immigration official from the United States who turned the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said that the rules of the Memo “apply very widely to any imigrant who came to the United States through the border between the United States and Mexico.”
“It is very known that almost all immigrants who reach the border between the United States and Mexico would have to pay some money to posters that control the territory of the Mexican side, directly or indirectly,” he said.
Cardinal Brown added that the rules do not seem to include “any individualized evaluation” to determine if migrants stopped a threat, before transferring them to Guantanamo.
The spokeswoman of the Department of Defense, Kingsley Wilson, confirmed the existence of the memorandum, saying that “strengthens the collaboration of the DOD and DHs by clarifying roles and responsibilities, and fostering efficient and coordinated operations in Navolanamo.”
CBS News contacted DHS representatives to comment.
The Guantanamo operation is not the only immigration effort of the Trump administration to face the scrutiny about Who exactly It has been attacked. In mid -March, for example, the Administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, so that they could be imprisoned within that country. Infamous mega-prison. The Trump administration said all were criminals and gang members, but An “60 minutes” investigation He did not find a criminal record for 75% of Venezuelan sports.
A high profile operation but largely secret
The Trump administration was first sending migrants to Guantanamo in February, initially only transferring the Venezuelans there, including the men who accused of having links with the gang of the train prison in Aragua. The first group of Venezuelan detainees was possible to fly to Honduras, where the Venezuelan government picked them up so that they could be transported back to their homeland.
Since then, the Administration has sporadically flown to migrants from different countries to the base, before transferring them back to the United States or other nations. Administration officials have regularly promoted flights to Guantanamo, but have provided limited details about the operation, including costs and who is eligible to be sent to the base.
What has been publicly revealed, By CBS News And other means of communication, is that officials have transferred both to the detainee consultant to be “high threat” and “low -risk” to Guantanamo, including migrants whose relationships have denied accusations of gang membership and crime.
Government guidelines define detained migrants as a “high” threat if they have a violent or serious criminal record, a history of disruptive behavior or alleged gang ties. Low risk arrest is defined as migrants who face deportation because they are in the United States illegally but lack serious criminal records, or anyone.
Those sent to Guantanamo and considered that they are migrants “high” have been held at Camp VI, a section of the prison after September 11 that still houses approximately one boxes Terrorism suspects. Detenses migrants that are considered a “low” risk have been transferred to the base of the base’s migrant operations, an installation similar to a barracks that has intercepted historical asylum seekers in the sea.
Wilson, the spokeswoman of the Department of Defense, said that there are currently 42 migrants arrested in Guantanamo, 32 of them housed in the migrant operations center and 10 calls Detinse “high threat” in camp VI.
The March 7 memorandum obtained by CBS News sheds light on other aspects of operations in Guantanamo. For example, he confirms that detained migrants transported there remain in the legal custody of the application of immigration and customs, he even thought that the army is providing access to their facilities to stop them.
As part of the agreement, DHS also accepted the conditions in camp VI and the migrant operations center as suitable for keeping migrant adults, and pointed out that it would not transfer children to the base. The department agreed to send OCE officers or contractors to the base, even supervise security at the migrant operations center.
Memorandum makes the DHS responsible for providing detained services such as recreation and religious adaptations; Determine if migrants have access to lawyers; And administer “involuntary medical treatment”, as hunger strikes for the duration of the force.
The agreement also charges DHS for supervising the transfer of Alienco detense Guantanamo, which requires the department to relocate migrants from the base not more than 180 days after their deportation orders are issued.
The Army, as stipulated by the agreement, is mainly an answer to provide security in camp VI and in the perimeter of the facilities. It also agreed to provide toilets and hygiene facilities, as well as medical care for both ice personnel and detained migrants.
The memorandum says that the Department of Defense promised to erect tents at the base to keep additional detainees, although those sites have not yet used the leg to stop migrants. However, the agreement indicates that these tents “do not have energy, lighting or heating/air conditioning.”
The effort to keep migrants in Guantanamo faces legal challenges by defenders, even in the American Union of Civil Liberties, the main adversary of the Trump Administration in the Federal Court.
ACLU alleged judicial presentations that migrants were initially heroes in the incommunicado in Guantanamo, without access to relatives or lawyers. Subsequently, the Administration said it touches the measures to give detained access to lawyers.
ACLU also described the detention conditions in Guantanamo as deplorable, citing statements of migrant heroes there. In one of those statements, a Venezuelan man previously held at the base said he went on a hunger strike after feeling “kidnapped.”
The White House Cabinet Deputy Director Stephen Miller, the main architect of the Trump administration immigration agenda, said there are no plans to stop using Guantanamo to stop migrants.
“It’s open,” Miller said in Fox News. “Gitmo is open.”
Read the memorandum below:
Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.
Camilo Montoya-Galvez
