The Donald Trump administration has begun sending undocumented US migrant flights to Guantanamo Bay. Officials in charge portray the move as a general practice, saying that Guantanamo Bay is always used to enforce immigration.
“We have the ability to continue doing what we have always done. We have always had the presence of illegal immigrants in detention. Homeland Security Secretary Christie Noem said. He spoke on NBC’s Meet the Press on the 2nd of the month.
Noem made a similar claim on February 9th, two days after visiting the Guantanamo Bay facility, in the state of a coalition of CNN.
The US has actually used camps in Guantanamo Bay to detain certain migrants, but immigration experts say that Trump’s use is different.
On January 29, Trump expanded the Center for Immigration Operations in Guantanamo Bay to “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal foreigners who are illegally present in the United States.” I have signed a memo instructing the ministry.
The administration has provided conflicting information on where immigrants will be held within Guantanamo Bay, how long and under what conditions will be held.
Based on the information available, there are important differences between the Navy Center’s previous immigration operations and the Trump administration’s approach.
Historically, the US used Guantanamo Bay to keep immigrants parked at sea. Now, Trump is sending people detained in the US soil. Previously, immigrants were held at the Immigration Operations Center. This was another part of the prison base suspected of being accused of “terrorism” and was in custody. The first immigrant group to arrive in Guantanamo Bay under Trump is being detained in a prison where such suspects were detained. In recent years, Immigration Operations Centres have held very few immigrants and have limited capacity. Trump says he plans to detain 30,000 people. Many people have not been detained in Guantanamo Bay since the 1990s.
When the US held Haitians and Cubans in Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is well known as a high security prison for foreign “terrorist” suspects following the attack on September 11, 2001. But about a decade ago, the US used some of it as immigration detention centers.
In the early 1990s, the US Coast Guard intercepted Haitians and Cubans in the waters of Guantanamo Bay. In September 1994, 12,000 Haitians and 33,000 Cubans were held at the Immigration Operations Centre in Guantanamo Bay, Congressional Research Service discovered. People were holding them in a tent-like structure surrounded by razor wires.
People held in Guantanamo Bay had no access to lawyers to help with the asylum, Yale Law Professor Harold Co told PBS News in 2017.
Some Haitians and Cubans were allowed to apply for asylum. Few people got it. Many Haitians who the government determined they could apply for asylum were banned from entering the United States because they tested positive for HIV, and immigration advocacy group, the National Center for Immigration Justice, wrote in a 2021 report It’s there.
The immigration camp was closed in 1996. However, it was not the last time an immigrant was held in Guantanamo Bay.
How practice resumed
The Guantanamo Immigration Operations Centre, separate from the detention centre where terrorism is protected by suspects, can have around 130 people, according to the Global Detention Project, an international group that documents immigrant detention around the world.
The Department of Homeland Security did not answer Politifact’s questions about how many immigrants had been in Guantanamo Bay before Trump’s order. However, in September 2024, the New York Times reported that the center had accommodated 37 people from 2020 to 2023, and as of February 2024, four people.
Those intercepted at sea and sent to Guantanamo have no option to seek asylum in the United States, the International Refugee Support Project said in a September 2024 report. Instead, they must choose to return to the country they are fleeing, or wait to accept a third country in Guantanamo Bay.
Immigrants in Guantanamo Bay lack “access to basic human necessities, adequate medical care, education and drinking water,” the Refugee Project said in its report. Immigrants have no access to unsupervised calls with lawyers and are unable to speak openly about their poor status at naval bases, the report said.
How long they have been detained in Guantanamo Bay varies. The New York Times reported that the family had been there for over six months in 2024. But in one case, someone was in custody for almost four years.
What’s the difference in the Trump administration’s approach?
Trump’s unprecedented proposal raises legal issues.
The United States has never sent people arrested or detained in the United States to Guantanamo. The Non-partisan Foreign Policy Think Tank, a Foreign Relations Council, wrote on February 4th.
Under federal law, the people in the United States accused of civil immigration violations have more rights than Hannah Fulham, interim senior policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project.
People in the US soil have rights and protections, even if they were sent to Guantanamo. Whether these rights are respected is another question,” she said.
As the NOEM has assured, it is not clear how the formal process of immigration will follow.
“The US government is intentionally using Guantanamo in the hopes of avoiding surveillance and public eye.
The American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter to the Trump administration on February 7th requesting access to immigrants sent to Guantanamo Bay. bind them.”
In a February 9 interview with CNN, Noem said it was “comfortable” to take her and Trump to the island with immigrants who were already in US soil.
It is unclear how long immigrants will be in Guantanamo Bay under Trump’s plan.
Noem and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegses said the detention of immigrants in Guantanamo Bay will be temporary while awaiting deportation. On CNN, Noem said, “My goal is that people will not have weeks or months at these facilities,” but if other countries accept it, she will stay longer. plug.
On January 29, Trump said Guantanamo Bay was intended to hold the worst crimes that threaten American citizens, some of which we have to say they will return. It’s so bad that they don’t even trust them to keep their country because they don’t want to come.”
It is unclear what will happen if the government attempts to detain migrants who have been sent indefinitely to Guantanamo Bay.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001, so the U.S. Supreme Court cannot be held indefinitely in immigration detention in the United States. As a result, immigrants who could not be deported because they did not accept the country’s foreign aid flights have been released to the public.
Another shift from previous use of Guantanamo Bay for immigration detention is where immigration is held under the Trump administration.
Hegus said migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay will be detained separately from camps where suspected terrorism is being protected. He said they will be detained at the Immigration Operations Centre.
Ten migrants on the first flight from the US to Guantanamo Bay were placed at one of the detention centers where terrorist suspects were held previously. The building where immigrants are located is not the same building that the remaining 15 wartime detainees are being held, the Department of Defense said.
Wartime detainees have been held in Guantanamo Bay for decades.