The Donald Trump administration has began sending flights of undocumented migrants in the US to Guantanamo Bay. The officers in cost have painted the transfer as a typical observe, saying Guantanamo Bay has at all times been used for immigration enforcement.
“We’ll have the capability to proceed to do there what we’ve at all times carried out. We’ve at all times had a presence of unlawful immigrants there which have been detained. We’re simply constructing out some capability,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem mentioned on February 2 on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Noem made an identical declare February 9 on CNN’s State of the Union, two days after visiting the Guantanamo Bay facility.
The US has certainly beforehand used a Guantanamo Bay camp to detain sure migrants, however Trump’s use is totally different, immigration consultants have mentioned.
On January 29, Trump signed a memo directing the departments of defence and homeland safety to broaden the Migrant Operations Centre at Guantanamo Bay to “present further detention house for high-priority felony aliens unlawfully current in the US”.
The administration has supplied conflicting details about the place migrants can be held inside Guantanamo Bay, for the way lengthy and below what circumstances.
Primarily based on obtainable data, there are key variations between the naval centre’s earlier immigration operations and the Trump administration’s approach:
- Traditionally, the US has used Guantanamo Bay to carry migrants stopped at sea. Now, Trump is sending individuals who had been detained on US soil.
- Beforehand, migrants had been held on the Migrant Operations Middle, a special a part of the bottom from the prisons the place suspects accused of “terrorism” are detained. The primary group of migrants that arrived at Guantanamo Bay below Trump are detained within the prisons the place such suspects had been held.
- In recent times, the Migrant Operations Middle has held few migrants and had restricted capability. Trump says he plans to detain 30,000 individuals. That many individuals haven’t been detained at Guantanamo Bay because the Nineteen Nineties.
When the US held Haitians and Cubans at Guantanamo Bay
The Guantanamo Bay naval base is healthier referred to as a high-security jail for overseas “terrorism” suspects following the September 11, 2001, assaults. However a couple of decade earlier than, the US used a bit of it as a migrant detention centre.
Within the early Nineteen Nineties, the US Coast Guard held Haitians and Cubans intercepted at sea at Guantanamo Bay. In September 1994, 12,000 Haitians and 33,000 Cubans had been held in Guantanamo Bay’s Migrant Operations Middle, the Congressional Analysis Service discovered. Individuals had been held in tent-like constructions surrounded by razor wire.
Individuals held in Guantanamo Bay didn’t have entry to legal professionals to assist them apply for asylum, Yale legislation professor Harold Koh advised PBS Information in 2017. Koh sued the US authorities over its remedy of Haitians in Guantanamo Bay.
Some Haitians and Cubans had been allowed to use for asylum; few obtained it. Many Haitians whom the federal government decided might apply for asylum had been barred from coming into the US to use as a result of they had been HIV-positive, the Nationwide Immigrant Justice Middle, an immigrant advocacy organisation, wrote in a 2021 report.
The migrant camp closed in 1996. However that wasn’t the final time migrants had been held in Guantanamo Bay.
How the observe was restarted
The Guantanamo Migrant Operations Middle, which is separate from the detention centre the place terrorism suspects are saved, can maintain about 130 individuals, in line with the World Detention Venture, a world group that paperwork immigration detention worldwide.
The Division of Homeland Safety didn’t reply PolitiFact’s question about what number of migrants had been at Guantanamo Bay earlier than Trump’s order. However in September 2024, The New York Instances reported the centre had held 37 individuals from 2020 to 2023, and 4 individuals as of February 2024. Individuals detained there have been intercepted at sea by the US Coast Guard.
Individuals intercepted at sea and despatched to Guantanamo don’t have the choice to hunt asylum within the US, the Worldwide Refugee Help Venture mentioned in a September 2024 report. As a substitute, they need to select between returning to the nation they’re fleeing or ready in Guantanamo Bay for a 3rd nation to just accept them.
Migrants at Guantanamo Bay lack “entry to fundamental human requirements, acceptable medical care, schooling, and potable water,” the refugee mission mentioned in its report. Migrants don’t have entry to unmonitored calls with legal professionals and may’t candidly talk about poor circumstances on the naval base, the report mentioned.
How lengthy individuals have been held in Guantanamo Bay varies. The New York Instances reported in 2024 that households have been there for greater than six months. However in a single case, somebody was held for practically 4 years.
What’s totally different concerning the Trump administration’s method?
Trump’s unprecedented proposal raises authorized questions.
The US has by no means despatched individuals who had been arrested or detained in the US to Guantanamo, the Council on Overseas Relations, a nonpartisan overseas coverage assume tank, wrote on February 4.
Underneath federal legislation, individuals within the US accused of civil immigration violations have extra rights than individuals intercepted at sea, Hannah Flamm, interim senior coverage director on the Worldwide Refugee Help Venture, mentioned.
Individuals who have been on US soil “have rights and protections, even when they’re despatched to Guantanamo. Whether or not these rights can be revered is one other query,” she mentioned.
It’s not clear how due course of for migrants can be adopted, as Noem assured.
“The US authorities deliberately makes use of Guantanamo in hopes of avoiding oversight and the general public eye, which makes the power ripe for abuse,” Flamm mentioned.
The American Civil Liberties Union wrote the Trump administration a letter on February 7 requesting entry to the migrants who’ve been despatched to Guantanamo Bay in order that they have “entry to authorized counsel, and so advocates and the general public can perceive the circumstances below which the federal government is detaining them”.
In her February 9 CNN interview, Noem mentioned she and Trump had been “comfy” that it’s authorized to carry migrants who had been already on US soil to the island.
It’s unclear how lengthy the migrants can be at Guantanamo Bay below Trump’s plan.
Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have mentioned migrants’ detention at Guantanamo Bay can be short-term whereas they await deportation. On CNN, Noem mentioned, “My aim is that individuals are not in these amenities for weeks and months,” although she wouldn’t rule out longer stays if different international locations don’t settle for them.
On January 29, Trump mentioned he intends that Guantanamo Bay maintain “the worst felony unlawful aliens threatening the American individuals. A few of them are so unhealthy we don’t even belief their international locations to carry them as a result of we don’t need them coming again.”
It’s unclear what is going to occur if the federal government tries to detain migrants despatched to Guantanamo Bay indefinitely.
Individuals can’t be indefinitely held in immigration detention within the US, the US Supreme Court docket dominated in 2001. So immigrants who can’t be deported as a result of their residence international locations gained’t settle for deportation flights are typically launched.
One other shift from the previous use of Guantanamo Bay for immigration detention is the situation the place migrants can be held below Trump’s administration.
Hegseth mentioned migrants despatched to Guantanamo Bay can be detained individually from the camp the place terrorism suspects are saved. He mentioned they’d be detained within the Migrant Operations Middle.
The ten migrants on the primary flight from the US to Guantanamo Bay had been positioned in one of many detention centres the place terrorism suspects had been beforehand held, not within the Migrant Operations Middle. The constructing the migrants are in just isn’t the identical constructing the place the remaining 15 wartime detainees are held, the Protection Division mentioned.
Wartime detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay for a long time.
