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By Hannah Parry
Associate News Editor
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The United States started flying undocumented migrants out to Guantanamo Bay on Tuesday under President Donald Trump's mass deportation plan.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed during an appearance on the Fox Business Network the first deportation flights to the notorious detention center were underway today.
"President Trump is not messing around, and he's no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world," she said.
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Why It Matters
Trump made immigration a core tenet of his presidential campaign, telling his supporters he would carry out the biggest mass deportation in history and tighten security measures at the border.
The first law he signed as president was the Laken Riley Act, named after a 22-year-old nursing student who was killed by a Venezuelan migrant, allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to detain migrants charged with minor crimes such as shoplifting, regardless of their immigration status
Since then, ICE raids have been carried out across the U.S., with reports of American citizens getting caught up in the arrests.
Last week, Trump announced he was planning to use Guantanamo Bay, which is more typically associated with terrorists including those behind the 9/11 attacks, to house deportees.
Guantanamo also became infamous for the alleged torture and abuse carried out by the U.S. against its detainees.
What To Know
The first flight to Guantanamo, carrying around a dozen migrants, left from Fort Bliss in Texas this afternoon, the Wall Street Journalreports.
Staff and supplies are being rushed to the area ahead of the migrants' arrival, with around 200 Marines sent to Guantanamo in recent days. Another 300 are set to join them shortly.
Construction of a tent city is underway and the center is now reportedly equipped to hold 120 migrants, a far cry from the 30,000 Trump hopes to detain there eventually.
Trump signed a memo last week ordering the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare to house 30,000 migrants at Guantánamo Bay.
The policy revives a controversial strategy last used during the Clinton administration when thousands of Cuban and Haitian migrants were detained at Guantanamo Bay naval base between 1994 and 1996.
The president told reporters during the signing that he didn't trust some of the countries to which they were deporting migrants back to hold them.
"Some of them are so bad, we don't even trust the countries to hold them, because we don't want them coming back," he said. "So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo."
The decision comes as ICE arrests across the country rise to nearly 1,200 a day.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told NBC News on Sunday that "due process will be followed" but declined to say whether women and children would be kept at Guantánamo Bay.
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What Is Guantanamo Bay?
Guantanamo Bay, commonly known as "Gitmo," is a United States military prison within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, on the southeastern coast of Cuba.
The U.S. has leased the land from Cuba since 1903 under an agreement that the Cuban government disputes and opposes.
The detention camp has long been associated with the detention of terrorism suspects including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. However, it also houses a separate Migrant Operations Center, which has historically been used to hold migrants intercepted at sea, primarily from Haiti and Cuba.
The Trump administration said it would expand the migrant facility rather than use the military prison that has housed detainees from the U.S. war on terror. "We're just going to expand upon that existing migrant center," said border czar Tom Homan.
What are people saying?
Donald Trump said last week: "We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And tough. That's a tough – that's a tough place to get out of."
Vince Warren, the executive director of the human rights organization Center for Constitutional Rights, told NPR: "There haven't been 30,000 beds [there] in decades. The facility is decrepit. It's been falling apart. It's in disrepair. And, as a practical matter, the conditions that would be created if people went there would be so substandard that it would give people opportunities to file lawsuits around the conditions of their confinement while they're being deported."
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters, while visiting the border on Monday: "It's the perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country through gray tails or other assets, but also hardened criminals. Where are you going to put Tren De Aragua before you send them all the way back? How about a maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay, where we have the space."
What is next?
These are the first of many flights bound for Guantanamo Bay under Trump's mass deportation plans after he ordered the U.S. Navy base to prepare to house up to 30,000 migrants.
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