 "Inside Guantanamo Bay, where inmates were ‘tortured’ and Trump wants to send illegal migrants")
US President Donald Trump is very serious about cracking down on illegal migration in the country. And on Wednesday (January 29), he signed an executive order (he’s signed many of those since coming to power less than 10 days ago) directing his administration to prepare to house tens of thousands of “criminal aliens” at the notorious Guantánamo military detention facility in Cuba.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said while signing the Laken Riley Act . “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 Guantánamo.”
He said the move would “double our capacity immediately,” adding that Guantánamo was a “tough place to get out of.”
The move quickly gave way to dismay and outrage. That’s because Gitmo, as the military detention centre is popularly called, is primarily known for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences. Cuba’s President, Miguel Díaz-Canel called the plan “an act of brutality”.
Here’s what you need to know about Guantanamo Bay and its brutal history.
What is Trump’s Gitmo plan for illegal migrants?
On Wednesday, Donald Trump unveiled a surprise plan to detain thousands of undocumented migrants at Guantanamo Bay. Speaking of his plan to use the notorious military facility on the eastern tip of Cuba, which has been used for holding terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks , Trump said the plan would “bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime”.
Later, an executive order on the same was released, which read: “I hereby direct the Secretary of Defence and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Centre at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs identified by the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security.”
It added: “This memorandum is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
While full details haven’t come out yet on the plan, newly sworn-in Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News that migrants would not be kept where the remaining 9/11 detainees. Meanwhile, Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar, told reporters outside the White House that certain migrants could be flown to the island, and that the operation would be run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. “The worst of the worst, the significant public safety threats we can fly them,” he was quoted as saying by the New York Times.
However, that hasn’t stopped activists from expressing their outrage at the move. Cuba, slammed the move, with its Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla saying the idea “shows contempt towards the human condition and international law”.
Meanwhile, Vincent Warren, executive director of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, told the New York Times that Trump’s order sent a dark message that “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.”
What is the history of Guantanamo?
A naval base in Cuba, it has been used by the US since 1898. According to the US Navy, a lease for 45 square miles of land and water at Guantanamo Bay was signed in 1903 between Washington and Havana. Three decades later, a treaty was signed in 1934 between the two countries, reaffirming the lease.
In 2002, under the administration of President George W Bush, a military prison was opened at the base following the 9/11 attacks to deal with prisoners who were termed “enemy combatants” and denied many US legal rights.
The first of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay arrived on January 11, 2002 — chained prisoners in orange jumpsuits sitting in cages became the defining images of the US-led “War on Terror”. Many who were first brought to the facility were believed to belong to terror groups such as Al Qaeda and Taliban.
However, “over the next two decades it hardened into an American institution with its own rules, its own prison, its own court,” said Deadline.
How did Gitmo acquire the tag of notorious?
Since its establishment, the facility at Guantanamo Bay has acquired notoriety for its alarming conditions. Many of those held at Gitmo did not qualify as prisoners of war and so were excluded from the rights of the Geneva Convention. This led to many inmates being tortured with the United Nations stating that the circumstances under which those being held there were “cruel, inhuman and degrading”.
As Pardiss Kebriaei, a lawyer representing Guantánamo prisoners, told The Guardian, “Though not singular among prisons in its harsh treatment and arbitrary detention it was at least for a time very overt in its extremeness, and what could be seen more plainly than usual caused a reaction.”
Several reports emerged of brutal treatment of prisoners , including the use of torture and so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as force-feeding, waterboarding and much more. This led to Amnesty International calling Guantanamo Bay a “symbol of torture, rendition and indefinite detention without charge or trial”.
Abu Zubaydah, who has been held at the facility since 2006, earning him the title of ‘Forever Prisoner’, earlier released a collection of sketches which detailed the torture he has endured at the prison. The images he drew include the extremely violent technique used against him known as “walling” — in which a person’s neck is encircled by a collar, and is then used to slam the person against a wall. He also drew sketches of him being subjected to simulated drowning, or waterboarding, 83 times, and guards threatening to desecrate the Quran.
Such allegations prompted former US Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden to close the facility, but Congress has opposed efforts to shutter Guantanamo and it remains open to this day.
Who have been the infamous inmates of Guantanamo? Who is still housed there?
Guantanamo has housed several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, among them self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed . The facility has also housed the man accused of masterminding the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. He was captured in 2002 and transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.
Meanwhile, of the roughly 800 people detained on suspicion of militant activity or terrorism-related offences who have been held at Guantanamo since early 2002, only 15 inmates currently remain, following the release of a number of detainees toward the end of Biden’s administration.
Three of the 15 are eligible for transfer, three are eligible for a review for possible release, seven are facing charges and two have been convicted and sentenced, the Defence Department said earlier this month when it announced the release of 11 Yemenis who had been held there.
Have migrants ever been detained at Guantanamo?
Yes. The New York Times reported last September that the military base had also been used for decades by the US to detain migrants intercepted at sea, but in an area separate from that used to hold those accused of terrorism. It said in its report that just 37 were held from 2020 to 2023.
However, the conditions of this facility remain murky. The nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project said in a report last year that people are held in “prison-like” conditions. It said they were “trapped in a punitive system” indefinitely, with no accountability for the officials running it.
Now, Trump wants to use the same centre to detain “the worst of the worst”.
However, it will be easier said than done. Deborah Fleischaker, an ICE official during the Biden administration, told the New York Times that detaining immigrants at the base would be particularly difficult. “Gitmo is very small and very remote,” she said. “Moving materials and people in and out would be a logistical nightmare. And the makeup of who would be held there is very important. Only men? Women and children? If women and children are there, the housing challenges become even more difficult.”
With inputs from agencies
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