After he vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to send illegal citizens to a detention camp in Guantánamo Bay. While signing the Laken Riley Act on Wednesday, Jan. 29, he expressed that he would send millions of illegal immigrants to the deportation center.
While it is not clear how it is decided which detained immigrants will be sent to the detention center, in an interview with PBS News, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem (formerly the governor of South Dakota) said that this punishment will be saved for “the worst of the worst.”
The U.S. naval base, otherwise known as GITMO, has a history as a prison for Sept. 11 conspirators. It is most notorious for its torture and unfair treatment of the detained. Deepa Alagesan, Senior Supervising Attorney of The International Refugee Assistance Project, describes the conditions of the migrant section of the facility as “prison-like.”
The migrant center includes a handful of buildings. As the base is currently too small to contain the promised influx of migrants, members of Congress have said that Trump would expand the base.
In the same interview with PBS News, Secretary Thomas Homan said that they are “just going to expand upon that existing migrant center.”
“Refugees are already detained at Guantánamo Bay in inhumane conditions, and expanding the facility will be nothing short of disastrous,” says Alagesan.
Trump’s decision has met significant backlash from multiple human rights organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights. The executive director of the organization, Vince Warren, calls the Cuban detention camp a “global symbol and site of lawlessness, torture, and racism.”
Cuban Secretary Miguel Díaz-Canel commented on the use of Guantánamo Bay in a post on X Jan. 29. He called the decision “an act of brutality,” condemning the use of a base “next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention.”
“The order — directing the DOD and DHS [to] prepare to hold 30,000 people — sends 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,” said Warren.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Constitutional Rights, International Refugee Assistance Project and the ACLU of the District of Columbia have sued the Trump administration over rights to access immigrants detained in Guantánamo Bay.
On behalf of several plaintiffs, on Feb. 12, these groups aimed to meet with the people being detained in order to provide them with legal assistance.
According to the ACLU, the Trump administration has provided little to no information about immigrants newly detained at Guantánamo. They have not explained the details of how long they will be held there, under what conditions or whether they will have any means of communicating with their families and attorneys.
After these cases were filed, the administration temporarily halted migrant transfers to the base. They have since restarted their efforts.
In response to these human rights concerns, a bipartisan delegation from Congress plans to inspect the detention center. The House Armed Services Committee is set to visit the center “as soon as Friday,” according to USA Today.
Due to its lack of accessibility, there are no commercial flights to the base. This inspection is the opportunity lawmakers have been waiting for to visit the hard-to-reach facility. It would provide a close-up look at the modern conditions of the center, perhaps relieving or aggravating concerns.
Dee Cohen is a junior majoring in English literature and minoring in French
