According to US President Donald Trump, he would direct the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon to set up a facility for up to 30,000 migrants in Guantanamo Bay, reports RTE.
Separate from the high-security US prison for foreign terrorist suspects, the US military station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, already contains a migrant facility that has been used sometimes for decades, notably to detain Cubans and Haitians who were captured at sea.
However, the Pentagon’s involvement in Mr. Trump’s campaign against illegal immigration would once again grow if the facility were to be used to shelter tens of thousands of migrants.
“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,” Mr Trump said at the White House, reports RTE.
“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. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And, tough,” reports RTE.
In honour of a US student who was murdered by a Venezuelan immigrant, Mr. Trump made the shocking remark while signing a measure permitting the pre-trial detention of unauthorised migrants accused of serious crimes and theft.
Described as a “tough place to get out of,” Mr. Trump claimed that the actions will “bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all,” reports RTE.
For the event, Mr. Trump invited the parents of Laken Riley, the 22-year-old American nursing student who was killed and whose name appears on the new migrant criminal bill act, to the White House.
“We will keep Laken’s memory alive in our hearts forever,” Mr Trump said, reports RTE.
“With today’s action, her name will also live forever in the laws of our country, and this is a very important law,” reports RTE.
Just two days after Mr. Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the Republican-led US Congress enacted the measure, which is the first bill he has signed since returning to the White House.
Riley vanished after her morning run at the University of Georgia in Athens in 2024, and Jose Antonio Ibarra, a 26-year-old undocumented Venezuelan, was found guilty of her murder, reports RTE.
However, the statement about Guantanamo was the one that made headlines.
Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called the facility a “asset” and told Fox News that “we’re evaluating and talking about” utilising it for migrants, reports RTE.
Following the 9/11 assaults on the United States by Al-Qaeda, the Guantanamo prison was established.
Detainees captured throughout the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other subsequent operations, many of whom were never charged with a crime, have been held there indefinitely, reports RTE.
Around 800 individuals were detained at the location on Cuba’s eastern edge at its height. Detainees’ testimonies detailing the torture and abuse they endured at the hands of US security forces have long drawn condemnation from both home and foreign quarters.
UN experts have denounced it as a location of “unparalleled notoriety” because to the circumstances there and the rejection of fundamental legal standards, which have consistently prompted outrage from rights groups, reports RTE.
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