POSTMODERN KONCENTRATION KAMP
'Barbaric act': Cuban president among many condemning use of Guantánamo to hold immigrants
Naomi LaChance,
Naomi LaChance,
Alternet
February 4, 2025
FILE PHOTO: A Venezuelan man lays in bed with his daughters before getting ready to sleep in their apartment amid a time when, despite having legal documentation to reside in the U.S., they fear reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents may come to detain immigrants for deportation, in Aurora, Colorado, U.S., January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo
President Donald Trump’s administration was sending undocumented immigrants apprehended at the Southern border to the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on Tuesday.
CNN is reporting that the Pentagon has also begun constructing a tent city intended to detain up to 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Experts, politicians, and activists are condemning the move.
“It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country ... but also hardened criminals,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday.
Guantánamo Bay is notorious for human rights violations and torture of suspected terrorists during George W. Bush’s presidency. As of January 2025, 15 detainees remained out of 780.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said last week.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the move. “For Cuba, the violent and indiscriminate deportation of immigrants by the United States, arbitrary detentions and other human rights violations are unacceptable ... The establishment of a detention center at the American naval base in Guantánamo, where it is intended to imprison tens of thousands of people, constitutes a barbaric act.”
One former Homeland Security official told CNN they were unsure of the legality of the move. “They’d be pushing the limits of where the (Immigration and Nationality Act) applies,” they said — it is unclear whether American immigration law would be in effect. CNN also reported that it was unclear as to whether detainees would have access to legal or social services.
Advocates are outraged. “Sending immigrants to Guantánamo is a profoundly cruel, costly move,” Amnesty International’s Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights, Amy Fischer, posted on X. “It will cut people off from lawyers, family and support systems, throwing them into a black hole so the U.S. government can continue to violate their human rights out of sight. Shut Gitmo down now and forever!”
“Use of Guantánamo Bay to detain people is the latest in a shocking plan to expand the immigration detention system,” Stacy Suh, program director of Detention Watch Network, said in a statement.
“Guantánamo Bay’s abusive history speaks for itself and in no uncertain terms will put people’s physical and mental health in jeopardy," Suh said. "If realized, Trump’s immigration detention expansion will tear apart families, put people’s lives in danger, and cost taxpayers greatly ... This moment demands a national outcry — our elected officials cannot afford to remain silent on Trump’s excessive cruelty."
Click here to read CNN's report in its entirety.
February 4, 2025
FILE PHOTO: A Venezuelan man lays in bed with his daughters before getting ready to sleep in their apartment amid a time when, despite having legal documentation to reside in the U.S., they fear reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents may come to detain immigrants for deportation, in Aurora, Colorado, U.S., January 30, 2025. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo
President Donald Trump’s administration was sending undocumented immigrants apprehended at the Southern border to the U.S. Naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba on Tuesday.
CNN is reporting that the Pentagon has also begun constructing a tent city intended to detain up to 30,000 migrants and asylum seekers. Experts, politicians, and activists are condemning the move.
“It’s the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country ... but also hardened criminals,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Monday.
Guantánamo Bay is notorious for human rights violations and torture of suspected terrorists during George W. Bush’s presidency. As of January 2025, 15 detainees remained out of 780.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said last week.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the move. “For Cuba, the violent and indiscriminate deportation of immigrants by the United States, arbitrary detentions and other human rights violations are unacceptable ... The establishment of a detention center at the American naval base in Guantánamo, where it is intended to imprison tens of thousands of people, constitutes a barbaric act.”
One former Homeland Security official told CNN they were unsure of the legality of the move. “They’d be pushing the limits of where the (Immigration and Nationality Act) applies,” they said — it is unclear whether American immigration law would be in effect. CNN also reported that it was unclear as to whether detainees would have access to legal or social services.
Advocates are outraged. “Sending immigrants to Guantánamo is a profoundly cruel, costly move,” Amnesty International’s Director of Refugee and Migrant Rights, Amy Fischer, posted on X. “It will cut people off from lawyers, family and support systems, throwing them into a black hole so the U.S. government can continue to violate their human rights out of sight. Shut Gitmo down now and forever!”
“Use of Guantánamo Bay to detain people is the latest in a shocking plan to expand the immigration detention system,” Stacy Suh, program director of Detention Watch Network, said in a statement.
“Guantánamo Bay’s abusive history speaks for itself and in no uncertain terms will put people’s physical and mental health in jeopardy," Suh said. "If realized, Trump’s immigration detention expansion will tear apart families, put people’s lives in danger, and cost taxpayers greatly ... This moment demands a national outcry — our elected officials cannot afford to remain silent on Trump’s excessive cruelty."
Click here to read CNN's report in its entirety.
US flights carrying detained migrants to Guantanamo ‘underway’
By AFP
February 4, 2025
Guantanamo is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses - Copyright AFP/File Sylvie LANTEAUME
The first US flights carrying detained migrants to America’s notorious Guantanamo military base in Cuba were underway Tuesday as President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on illegal migration, the White House said.
Guantanamo is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but the base also has a history of being used to hold migrants, and Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” there.
“Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business.
Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.
The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.
The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed.
The conditions there have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety.”
– ‘Perfect place’ –
Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both sought to close the facility, but Congress has opposed efforts to shutter Guantanamo and it remains open to this day.
It still holds 15 people incarcerated for militant activity or terrorism-related offenses, among them several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
But migrants will be detained in a separate part of the base.
According to US Southern Command, there are some 300 American military personnel at Guantanamo supporting “illegal alien holding operations.”
The base has for decades been used to hold Caribbean asylum seekers and refugees caught at sea, and was used in the 1990s to house tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans who fled crises in their homelands.
They were accommodated in tent cities, with many eventually sent home after being held at Guantanamo for years.
Thousands of undocumented migrants have been arrested since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, including some accused of crimes.
An unknown number have been repatriated to Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil and other countries, and Trump has vowed to expel millions.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday described Guantanamo as the “perfect place” to detain migrants as he visited the border with Mexico — an area where the Trump administration has boosted the country’s military presence in recent weeks.
The Pentagon will provide any necessary assets “to support the expulsion and detention of those in our country illegally,” Hegseth said.
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