Undocumented immigrants will be sent to Guantanamo by Trump

Al Jazeera reports that President Donald Trump has declared his intention to turn the US prison center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into a holding facility for unauthorized immigrants.

The Republican president made the unexpected remark on Wednesday as he signed the Laken Riley Act, his first significant piece of legislation.

Trump ran for a second term on a platform of launching a “mass deportation” campaign against the almost 11 million undocumented Americans, according to Al Jazeera. According to the report, a large number of them have been in the nation for decades, supporting their families and communities.

The Trump administration’s efforts to deport as many undocumented people as possible aligned with the Laken Riley Act.

The Doha-based media site claims that the law’s provisions mandate that the Department of Homeland Security hold non-citizens who are arrested or charged with burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting in the United States. Regardless of whether they are found guilty of a crime, such people may thereafter face deportation.

However, Trump changed course while discussing the act with a White House audience, announcing a new purpose for the Guantanamo prison.

In addition, I’m issuing an executive order today to direct the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense to start preparing the 30,000-person Guantanamo Bay migrant facility. Trump claimed that the majority of people are unaware of it.

Human rights organizations have long demanded that the Guantanamo Bay detention center be shut down, pointing to the facility’s cruel treatment and the absence of legal safeguards.

In 2022, a committee of United Nations experts referred to Guantanamo as a “ugly chapter” in US history, saying, “Any government cannot tolerate 20 years of arbitrary detention without trial coupled with torture or other cruel treatment.”

Many detainees were imprisoned for years without being given a chance to defend themselves at the facility, which launched in 2002 as a holding facility for individuals caught up in the US’s so-called “war on terror.”

The number of detainees housed within the facility has decreased since it celebrated its 23rd anniversary earlier this month. Only 15 detainees remained in the institution after the departing administration of President Joe Biden recently moved inmates to other nations.

President Barack Obama had previously planned to close the jail. However, Trump signed an executive order in 2018 during his first term to maintain Guantanamo Bay’s operations for the foreseeable future.

According to Al Jazeera, he has long aimed to increase US usage of the facility, including by transferring additional detainees.

Less than two weeks into his second term, the declaration on Wednesday marked the beginning of that ambition.

According to Trump, Guantanamo has 30,000 beds to house the most dangerous illegal aliens who pose a threat to the American people. “Some of them are so nasty that we don’t even trust the governments to detain them, so we’re going to transfer them to Guantanamo.”

Although studies have repeatedly demonstrated that illegal individuals commit crimes at a substantially lower rate than US-born citizens, the Republican leader has long confused immigration with criminality.

However, his 2024 reelection campaign was predicated on the idea that the US needed to repel a “migrant invasion,” using cases such as the Laken Riley case as examples.

In February 2024, Riley, a 22-year-old University of Georgia nursing student, was killed while jogging. An unauthorized immigrant who had previously been detained for shoplifting was the man found guilty in her death.

Allyson Phillips, Riley’s mother, gave a speech at the occasion on Wednesday, right before Trump signed the bill bearing her daughter’s name. She praised the US president in between sobs.

“No amount of tears can ever bring back our beloved Laken,” she remarked. “We hope that her life will save lives going forward.”

Trump claimed that the measure and his intention to turn Guantanamo into a migratory detention facility had a similar purpose.

We are one step closer to permanently eliminating the problem of migrant crime in our communities thanks to today’s signings,” he stated.

However, Trump has come under fire for inciting anti-immigrant nativist sentiment and enforcing a strict crackdown that could obstruct access to refuge, due process, and other rights, according to Al Jazeera.