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At the end of January, President Trump signed an executive order to open an immigrant detention centre at the US Naval base situated on Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The detention centre would have a capacity of around 30,000 people, and would house ‘the worst of the worst’. The migrant centre differs from the military detention centre that is also in Guantánamo Bay, which was established in order to hold suspected terrorists captured by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Immediately after President Trump announced his plan, groups such as Amnesty International and Refugees International condemned the plan, calling out the reported conditions inside the existing migrant centre in Guantánamo Bay.
Despite the backlash from human rights groups, and from the Cuban government, the White House has confirmed that two flights have departed for the centre. The first flight landed earlier this week, containing 10 migrants who are suspected to be part of a Venezuelan gang. While there are already a small number of detainees in the Guantánamo Bay detention centre, these migrants will be housed separately. At present, the migrant detention centre has a capacity of less than 200, a far cry from the 30,000 President Trump hopes to detain on the site, raising questions as to the conditions new migrants can expect when they land.
It was reported that Pentagon officials have been deployed to the site to erect tents to house the migrants being brought over on the President’s deportation flights. In addition, troops from the US Army and US Marine Corps have been deployed to bolster security, assist with construction, and provide food and medical services. The Secretary of Homeland Security has confirmed that it is not the plan for migrants to be held at the facility ‘indefinitely’, but even the temporary detaining of migrants at this site could potentially result in legal challenges for the Republican President.
President Trump is not the first President to detain migrants at Guantánamo Bay, however migrants who have been detained by other administrations have typically been captured at sea trying to enter the country illegally, as opposed to already being in the US. Reports from detainees already imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay have told of unpleasant conditions and mistreatment by officials, so it remains unclear how President Trump plans to clean up this image. Given the expected capacity of the site, it is presumed that President Trump will send more flights to Guantánamo Bay, it is only a matter of time before the Republican President faces legal challenges to his plans.
However, the Trump administration has made it clear that they won’t back down, with the Department of Justice launching its own lawsuit against Chicago, claiming the city’s local laws interfere with President Trump’s nationwide immigration policies. In response, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, has said the state will defend its laws, thus presenting the first possible challenge to Trump’s sweeping immigration plans.
The plan is still in its early days, so it remains to be seen how far President Trump will extend his plan, and how the site at Guantánamo Bay will develop, but it is absolutely certain that the plan won’t go ahead without a fight. With the US’s reputation already tarnished for its practices at Guantánamo Bay since its opening in 2002, many are concerned that history is soon to repeat itself.
Edited by Isabel Whitburn
Image: ‘A soldier atop a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV) surveys the area just outside Camp Delta during a detainee escape exercise in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba‘, U.S. Navy photo by Journalist Chief (SS) John F. Williams, 2003 // CC BY-ND 2.0
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