Donald Trump wants “worst” Send migrants to Guantánamo

US President Donald Trump plans a large detention center for criminal migrants at the US military base Guantánamo Bay. Trump said at an event in the White House, where 30,000 of the “worst criminal illegal immigrants” be detained. The Republican instructed the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Homeland to start preparations for it. The move immediately met with criticism.

There has been a barely known facility in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba for decades, in which migrants entered illegally, before they are deported to their homeland or other countries. According to the US media, only a negligible number of people had been housed there in recent years. Trump now wants to drastically expand the capacities, as it was said in an instruction by the President to the Department of Defense and the Ministry of Homeland.

Trump said most people knew nothing about it. There are “30,000 beds in Guantánamo”. There is no evidence of this statement. A US official told CNN that the facilities in Guantánamo Bay were far from being prepared to record up to 30,000 migrants. “There is no longer 30,000 beds”the broadcaster quoted the official. The capacity was present in the 1990s, but no longer today. And in order to provide this number of people, the United States would also have to clearly increase the staff at the military base.

Guantánamo – for many, this is synonymous with torture, broken law and draconian conditions of detention. The US naval base Guantánamo Bay in Cuba is notorious for a controversial prison camp that the United States had built after the attacks of September 11, 2001. At times, almost 800 people were detained there. The camp was then opened under Republican President George W. Bush to capture alleged Islamist terrorists without a process.

The legal situation of the prisoners, their detention conditions and reports on brutal interrogation and torture methods led to an outcry internationally. Human rights organizations have long been calling for closure. However, a small number of prisoners are still housed there. The efforts of several US governments to close the prison have so far failed because there is a lack of countries that the remaining prisoners absorb.

The existing migrant facility in Guantánamo Bay is separated from the famous prison camp. But Trump should not be wrong that Guantánamo is generally associated with hardness and merciless imprisonment. When he announced his new idea, he said with a view to some criminal migrants and their home countries: “Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to capture them because we don’t want them to come back.” The 78-year-old pushed after: “So we will send them to Guantánamo.” This is “A place from which it is difficult to get away again”.

Trump has been driving a tough course in migration policy since his first day in the start of office and, among other things, is promoting the arrest and deportation of criminal migrants and those without a residence permit. He strives to spread fear among immigrants and to deter people from other countries to come to the USA. The Republican had promised almost every day in the election campaign that he would “The biggest deportation program in American history” start.

The man who Trump for the supervision of this “Mass deportation” used, Tom Homan, emphasized, the migrant center, which has been in Guantánamo Bay for decades, should simply be expanded. The ICE police and immigration authority will take over the management. The new Minister of Homeland Protection Kristi Noem said when asked how much the project cost and discussions with the congress.

Defense Minister Pete Hegseth argued that the military base Guantánamo Bay was made to handle migrants to their home countries or third countries. It is more about transit from illegally immigrated people to other countries. “Guantánamo Bay is a perfect place”Hegseth said in an interview by the broadcaster Fox News, where he used to be a moderator himself.

The ex-soldier Hegseth said that he himself served at the Guantánamo Bay base and gave the best, among other things there was a golf course where about 6000 migrants could be accommodated. The project is still in the river, he emphasized. It is about expanding the opportunities for mass deportations, “Because President Trump, it thinks it thinks of getting illegal criminals from our country”.

Criticism came from Cuba, among other things. President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on the platform X that it was a “Act of brutality”Thousands of migrants forced and detained, right next to a prison that is known for torture and illegal detention.