A little over a week into Trump’s second term, the President shocked many around the world after discussing the possibility of housing up to 30,000 immigrants at Guantanamo Bay. Trump has already begun preparations to expand the facility’s capacity, and his border czar, Tom Homan, said he expects to start moving people into the prison within the next month.
Homan reiterated Trump’s rhetoric in a press conference on Sunday, February 2, alleging that only the most “dangerous” will be transported to Guantanamo. “The worst of the worst need to go to Guantanamo Bay,” they said. “We’ve had a migrant processing center there for decades… We’re going to expand it a lot.”
Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem refused to answer questions when asked by the press whether women or children would be housed at Guantanamo. “The plan is to have a process that we follow that’s laid out in law and make sure that we’re dealing with these individuals appropriately,” she said. “But this is an asset that we have that we fully intend to utilize.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth commented on the use of Guantanamo to his former TV co-hosts on Fox and Friends, describing the President’s plan to turn the base into a “supermax prison.”
On Friday, the Pentagon approved a request to send 1,000 active US troops to the US border, joining 1,600 active-duty troops deployed earlier in the week. The Pentagon also approved sending 500 soldiers to Guantanamo to prepare the facilities to house migrants detained at the border. The Department of Homeland Security is preparing flights for 5,000 detainees, with some of them expected to route directly to Guantanamo.
Guantanamo Bay holds a frightening history for the targets of American forces. Acquired by the US in the mid-19th century, the base was restructured in 2002 as a torture camp for those deemed a “risk to US national security.” 2009, President Obama ordered the camp to be closed; however, Congress refused to fund the base’s closure, leaving it empty for the last fifteen years.
The base was used to house migrants discovered at sea during the 1990s and, at one point, held up to 30,000 people. However, those housed on the base were awaiting asylum from other countries – not people who had already been living in the US as parts of communities and families. Many on the left have criticized Trump’s plan to reopen Guantanamo, in part due to the base’s history and capacity for human torture, as well as the reality that housing detainees beyond the capacity of the base quite literally fills the definition of a concentration camp.
