President Trump on Wednesday announced he’s signing an executive order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prep Guantanamo Bay for use as a migrant detention facility for “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
The president made the announcement from the White House before he signed the Laken Riley Act, a new law that expands the mandatory detention of migrants to include noncitizens who are charged with burglary, larceny, theft or shoplifting. The law is named after a 22-year-old nursing student, Laken Riley, who was murdered by an undocumented Venezuelan immigrant.
Mr. Trump said Guantanamo Bay has 30,0000 beds available, and “most people don’t even know about it.”
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Mr. Trump said. “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 out to Guantanamo.”
It’s not clear how many beds Guantanamo has, or how Mr. Trump landed on that number. The president has previously floated the idea of sending migrants with criminal backgrounds to be detained or imprisoned outside the U.S., although the logistics and legalities of such a feat remain unclear.
The Guantanamo Bay executive order is one of a plethora of executive actions the president has taken related to immigration and illegal immigration.
Cuba, where Guantanamo Bay is located, did not respond favorably to the president’s remarks.
Miguel Diaz-Canel, president of Cuba, called the move an “act of brutality,” according to a translation if his remarks.
“In an act of brutality, the new U.S. government announces the imprisonment at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory #Cuba, of thousands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he wrote on X.
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