Washington, Feb 3 (EFE).- More than 150 United States military personnel are already at the Guantanamo naval base (Cuba) to prepare for the expansion of the detention center for undocumented migrants.
The US Southern Command explained in a statement that the personnel are at the naval base to the memorandum Trump signed on Wednesday directing the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to expand “to full capacity” the base’s migrant center.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” said Trump about the facility in the high-security military prison.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has operated a migrant detention center at the Guantanamo Bay military base for decades, which it manages separately from the prison meant for terrorism suspects.
The migrants arriving at the Guantanamo base so far are those intercepted by US authorities at sea when they try to reach the country’s coasts, mainly from Cuba and Haiti.
The Migrant Operations Center is a former barracks with 120 beds where migrants are housed while a third country agrees to receive them.
Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, clarified last week that ICE will remain responsible for operating the 30,000-bed detention center.
The deployed military includes Marines and other military personnel from the US Southern Command, which oversees Latin America.
According to Trump “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 to Guantanamo (…) it’s a tough place to get out.”
The situation at the Guantanamo migration facility has historically been opaque, with little public information about what goes on there.
The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) reported in 2024 that the US secretly holds migrants in Guantanamo in “inhumane” conditions indefinitely after detaining them at sea.
IRAP has urged the center’s closure, citing lack of potable water, exposure to sewage, inadequate medical care, and a lack of access to confidential phone calls.
According to the Washington Post, the largest ICE center has about 2,000 beds for deportees, so if the objective of 30,000 beds is achieved, Guantanamo would eclipse the rest. EFE
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