President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will sign an executive action ordering the federal government to prepare the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house tens of thousands of migrants.
“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 said from the White House.
“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. This will double our capacity immediately.”
Trump’s remarks came just before he signed the Laken Riley Act, the first major legislative win of his second term, which requires the detention of undocumented migrants charged with certain crimes. Congress passed it earlier this month with Democratic support.
“Today’s signings bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all,” Trump said.
The president did not immediately provide more information about what precisely his executive action would entail, or when he would be signing it.
While the base is well-known for its detention camp where the United States holds terrorism suspects, Guantanamo Bay also hosts a separate migrant-processing center.
The Biden administration had discussed using that center to process Haitian migrants who were fleeing worsening conditions in their country last year. The US military also prepared the site to host migrants fleeing the catastrophic 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
The facilities at Guantanamo Bay are far from prepared to house up to 30,000 migrants, a US official told CNN.
“There’s no way there’s 30,000 beds anymore,” the US official said, adding that the capacity existed in the 1990s but no longer. And in order to care for that number of people, the official said, the US would have to bring “a lot of military staff” in.
“If they sent a lot of migrants (to Guantanamo Bay), they would need a lot more staff to manage them,” the official added. “They couldn’t do it with what they’ve got now, no way.”
- – CNN
