Trump Expands Migrant Detentions to Guantanamo Bay
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – US President Donald Trump is accelerating a mass deportation strategy by transferring thousands of migrants to the US military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, a site long criticized for human rights abuses.
The Trump administration will begin moving up to 9,000 migrants to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base this week, according to Politico.
In February, military personnel were dispatched to the Cuba-based installation to expand its detention capacity.
Roughly 500 migrants have already been held at the site in recent months for brief periods.
These detentions are described as temporary, intended as stopovers before deportation.
Officials say the transfers are meant to send a signal that the US is not open to migrants bypassing the legal immigration process.
A document reviewed by Politico revealed that several hundred Europeans, including more than 100 Russians and Romanians, are among those targeted, raising concerns within the State Department.
“The message is to shock and horrify people, to upset people, but we’re allies,” said one anonymous State Department official.
The White House faces ongoing legal challenges related to the policy.
In February, the US Navy confirmed that the USS St. Louis had docked at Guantanamo Bay to support the expansion.
Photographs showed troops setting up military tents, hammering stakes into the ground to increase capacity.
The Navy stated the first phase of the expansion would accommodate 2,000 detainees, with plans to reach 30,000.
Once known primarily for holding "terrorism" suspects, Guantanamo Bay is now being repurposed to house migrants awaiting deportation.
Trump stated that up to 30,000 so-called “high priority” migrants with criminal records will be detained at the base.
Legal scholars emphasize that constitutional protections, including access to legal counsel and habeas corpus, must still apply.
“The government’s view at that time was that Guantanamo was sort of outside the parameters of the US Constitution... And the Supreme Court rejected that,” said Eugene Fidell, a military law expert at Yale.
“We don’t want them coming back, so we’re sending them to Guantanamo,” Trump said at the White House.
Border advisor Tom Homan told reporters the military will build temporary structures to scale up capacity.
“We’re just going to expand upon that existing migrant center,” Homan said.
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem shared images of migrants arriving at the site.
“President Donald Trump has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst,” she wrote online. “That starts today.”
