- President Trump signed an executive order preparing a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay for criminal illegal immigrants.
- The facility historically served various purposes, including housing Haitian refugees in the 1990s and terrorists after 2002.
- Trump also signed the Laken Riley Act Wednesday.
Before signing the Laken Riley Act into law, President Donald Trump announced at a White House press conference that he would sign an executive order to prepare a 30,000 person migrant facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The order, signed Wednesday, directs the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin getting the facility ready for migrants convicted of crimes who Trump plans to deport.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. 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 to Guantanamo,” Trump said.
The president predicts the number of migrants who would be sent to Guantanamo will double its capacity, so in the press conference, he called on Congress to “provide full funding for the complete and total restoration of our sovereign borders as well as financial support to remove record numbers of illegal aliens.”
He continued to justify the need for mass deportation by discussing crime statistics related to migrants.
What is Guatanamo Bay?
U.S. Supreme Court records describe how the U.S. has maintained control of Guantanamo Bay since its initial leasing as a U.S. fueling station in 1903.
In 1934, a treaty reaffirmed the U.S.‘s lease of the area and increased the lease payment. Then in the late 1950s after 29 U.S. sailors and Marines were kidnapped from the base and former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro openly declared himself in favor of Marxism, U.S. and Cuban relations fell apart, although the U.S. largely kept control of the area.
Then in the 1990s, the station was used to house 34,000 Haitian refugees after the Haitian Crisis.
After the last Haitian refugees left, the Bush Administration opened a detainment facility in Guantanamo in 2002 to house suspected terrorists.
Guantanamo continued to house suspected terrorists through the early 2000s until President Barack Obama issued an executive order to close the facilities in 2016.
“For many years, it has been clear that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay does not advance our national security—it undermines it," Obama said after announcing the executive order. “It’s counterproductive to our fight against terrorists, who use it as propaganda in their efforts to recruit,” adding its high costs as another reason for its closure.
