President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act on January 29th, giving federal authorities more power to deport illegal immigrants, but at the ceremony also announced that the U.S. would send the “worst criminal aliens” to the Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in Cuba.
This comes as no surprise to many, as Trump has repeatedly promoted using detention centers for illegal immigrants, especially along the US border. This will be the first time that the US government will be given the authority to permanently incarcerate illegal immigrants instead of deporting them.
Guantanamo Bay is a bay in Cuba that the US has occupied since 1903, originally paying the Cuban government rent for the land to use it for coal mining and as a naval base. However, Guantanamo Bay (“Gitmo”, for short) has received a much darker reputation over the past few decades.
Following 9/11, Guantanamo began housing suspected terrorists, some of whom were determined to not have 5th Amendment rights such as due process or a trial by jury. This, as well as its remote location from federal or regional oversight, led to hundreds of extrajudicial punishments such as permanent solitary confinement, beatings, and torture, all without the prisoners being tried in a court of law.
President Obama made closing Guantanamo a major point of his 2012 campaign and warned about its use in his farewell address in 2016. Biden also spoke out about permanently closing Gitmo, but it never materialized. In between, Trump has spoken about how much he believes in the use of Guantanamo and now, how he wants to increase its usage.
In his speech, President Trump stated “We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people”.
Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, who would oversee the Cuban detention center, claimed that illegal immigrants could be shipped to the detention centers “very rapidly”.
The order has detractors, mainly in human rights groups claiming that this act creates a concentration camp and warns about a dangerous precedent being set.
Cuban president Miguel Diaz-Canel, who opposes US activity in Guantanamo Bay, called the orders an “act of brutality”, while Cuban Defense Minister Bruno Rodriguez said on X:
“The U.S. government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture and indefinite detention centers, shows contempt for the human condition and international law”
There currently is no timetable for the beginning of this program or how it will be funded outside of “future bills proposed in Congress.”
