Trump backs Guantanamo Bay facility to hold migrants

President Donald Trump yesterday signed an order directing his administration to revive a migrant detention facility at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba to hold detained migrants while they await deportation.

- JUSTIN BARAGONA ANDREW FEINBERG

Speaking at a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act – the first bill he has signed into law since becoming president – Mr Trump said the facility would be used to warehouse detainees and massively increase the number of detention beds available for holding migrants after they are arrested by American immigration officials.

“Today I’m also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump declared while signing the Laken Riley Act into law.

“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” he added. “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 Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”

The American military facility, which the US has controlled under the terms of an indefinite lease signed in 1903 and disputed by the current Cuban government, has previously been used to detain refugees from Cuba and Haiti during periods of high migration in the 1990s.

After Haiti’s government was overthrown in a 1991 coup, thenpresident Bill Clinton ordered refugees encountered at sea to be taken to the naval facility by the US Coast Guard. At the time, US government policy was to detain and repatriate Haitian refugees found at sea, and later, detain refugees who tested positive for HIV.