{"id":4969,"date":"2025-02-08T14:29:06","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T14:29:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=4969"},"modified":"2025-02-08T14:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T14:29:08","slug":"trump-begins-deportations-to-guantanamo-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/?p=4969","title":{"rendered":"Trump Begins Deportations to Guant\u00e1namo Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>3 Minute, 4 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n

At the end of January, President Trump signed an\u00a0executive order<\/a>\u00a0to open an immigrant detention centre at the US Naval base situated on Guant\u00e1namo Bay in Cuba. The detention centre would have a capacity of around 30,000 people, and would house \u2018the worst of the worst<\/a>\u2019. The migrant centre differs from the\u00a0military detention centre<\/a>\u00a0that is also in Guant\u00e1namo 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\u00a0Refugees International<\/a>\u00a0condemned the plan, calling out the reported conditions inside the existing migrant centre in Guant\u00e1namo Bay.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the backlash from human rights groups, and from the\u00a0Cuban government<\/a>, 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\u00a0Venezuelan gang<\/a>. While there are\u00a0already a small number of detainees<\/a>\u00a0in the Guant\u00e1namo Bay detention centre, these migrants will be housed separately. At present, the migrant detention centre has a\u00a0capacity of less than 200<\/a>, 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was reported that Pentagon officials have been deployed to the site to\u00a0erect tents<\/a>\u00a0to house the migrants being brought over on the President\u2019s deportation flights. In addition, troops from the US Army and US Marine Corps have been\u00a0deployed to bolster security<\/a>, 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 \u2018indefinitely<\/a>\u2019,\u00a0\u00a0but even the temporary detaining of migrants at this site could potentially result in legal challenges for the Republican President.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

President Trump is not the first President to detain migrants at Guant\u00e1namo Bay, however migrants who have been detained by other administrations have typically been\u00a0captured at sea<\/a>\u00a0trying to enter the country illegally, as opposed to already being in the US. Reports from detainees already imprisoned at Guant\u00e1namo Bay have told of\u00a0unpleasant conditions<\/a>\u00a0and 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 Guant\u00e1namo Bay, it is only a matter of time before the Republican President faces legal challenges to his plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Trump administration has made it clear that they won\u2019t back down, with the\u00a0Department of Justice<\/a>\u00a0launching its own lawsuit against Chicago, claiming the city\u2019s local laws interfere with President Trump\u2019s nationwide immigration policies. In response, the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, has said the state will\u00a0defend its laws<\/a>, thus presenting the first possible challenge to Trump\u2019s sweeping immigration plans.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Guant\u00e1namo Bay will develop, but it is absolutely certain that the plan won\u2019t go ahead without a fight. With the US\u2019s reputation already tarnished for its practices at Guant\u00e1namo Bay since its opening in 2002, many are concerned that history is soon to repeat itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Isabel Whitburn<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/a>‘, U.S. Navy photo by Journalist Chief (SS) John F. Williams, 2003 \/\/ CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a><\/p>\n

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At the end of January, President Trump signed an\u00a0executive order\u00a0to open an immigrant detention centre at the US Naval base situated on Guant\u00e1namo <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":4971,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,30,414],"tags":[199,436,218],"class_list":["post-4969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-politics","category-us-politics","tag-immigration","tag-trump","tag-us-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thewitnessexeter.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}