US President Donald Trump on Wednesday (Jan 29) unveiled a controversial plan to detain thousands of undocumented migrants at Guantanamo Bay, a notorious United States military prison.
Trump announced that a new detention facility that could hold up to 30,000 undocumented migrants would be constructed at the infamous military base in Cuba used to hold terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks.
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‘Criminal illegal aliens’
Staying true to his campaign narrative of demonizing migrants, Trump called them “criminal illegal aliens” and said that the Guantanamo Bay detention camp would help “double” the US capacity for detaining undocumented migrants.
Signing the bill ordering the pre-trial detention of migrants, Trump claimed his Guantanamo plan would “bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime.”
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” he said.
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Notorious Guantanamo Bay
The Guantanamo facility, as per AFP, currently houses only 15 detainees from the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and other operations triggered by the tragic September 11, 2001, attacks. At its peak, Guantanamo had 800 people incarcerated in its halls.
Human rights groups have long condemned the jail for indefinite detention. It has come to symbolise the early extremes of the US’s “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics argue amounted to torture.
Speaking to Fox News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth assured that the migrants would be housed separately from the remaining 9/11 detainees, and even suggested that a golf course could be converted to build the new facilities.
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‘Act of brutality’
Criticism of the plan was swift. Cuba condemned it as an “act of brutality.”
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Trump’s announcement followed the signing of the bipartisan Laken Riley Act, named after a US student killed by an undocumented Venezuelan migrant. The act mandates the pre-trial detention of migrants charged with theft or violent crimes, a move Trump praised as a step toward combating “migrant crime.”
The legislation is expected to increase the number of detainees in US custody.
(With inputs from agencies)