Trump orders mass detention facility to house 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo Bay

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump ordered his administration Wednesday to begin preparations on a detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house up to 30,000 migrants detained for being in the U.S. without legal authorization.

Trump signed a presidential memorandum instructing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to expand an existing migrant center at Guantanamo Bay, which has long been used to hold suspects accused in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Trump provided few details but said it would house "the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people." He announced the move during a bill signing ceremony at the White House for the Laken Riley Act, which empowers immigration officers to detain unauthorized immigrants when they are arrested on criminal charges. The new law is expected to increase the number of detained migrants.

"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," Trump said.

More: Trump to build mass detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for 30,000 migrants

Trump has pursued an aggressive crackdown on migrants during the first two weeks of his second term, ramping up detainments by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and sending troops to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The Naval Station Guantanamo Bay is about 430 miles southeast of Miami, on the southeastern coast of Cuba. Established in 1903, it is the United States' oldest overseas military installation and the only one in a communist country, according to the DOD.

Guantanamo already houses a migrant facility that is separate from the high-security facility used to house foreign terrorism suspects. It has been used over the years to house Cubans, Haitians and others, including suspects picked up at sea. Trump's memo charges his administration with expanding the migrant facility to "full capacity" to provide additional detention space for "high-profile criminal aliens."

"Most people don't even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo," Trump said. "This will double our capacity immediately ? and tough. It's a tough place to get out of."

Trump border czar Tom Homan said ICE would manage the facility, telling reporters it will house migrants who are “significant public safety threats.”

It was not clear on Wednesday how much the facility would cost or when it could open.

"That is something that the White House is working on to use resources that we currently have there at Guantanamo Bay. So we'll go through the process. The worst of the worst is where that can be utilized. So that potential is there, we know we need the infrastructure,” said Kristi Noem, the newly minted secretary of Homeland Security.

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How Guantanamo anticipates 'just this type of situation'

According to the United States' lease with Cuba, the U.S. retains jurisdiction while Cuba technically maintains sovereignty over the 45-square-mile installation. Over the past century, it has served as a key operational and logistics hub, supporting various missions including maritime security, humanitarian assistance, and joint operations, the Pentagon says.

Charles "Cully" Stimson, who helped establish the terrorist detention facility as President George W. Bush's deputy assistant secretary of defense for Detainee Affairs, said personnel at Guantanamo are ready to take in detainees on a moment’s notice.

“They do training exercises routinely in anticipation of just this type of situation where the president orders detainees, migrants or whatever you want to call them brought to Guantanamo for a short or medium period of time,” Stimson told USA TODAY. “So they have supplies and stores of tents, cots, food, desalinated water at the ready, just like they had back in the day when the Clinton administration housed Haitian migrants” and Cubans there.

Stimson also said the troops there are trained to segregate “people who have not committed crimes besides entering the country illegally from people who've committed violent crimes. We train for that contingency.”

In the past, troops stationed at the naval base would construct an informal tent city as opposed to a large permanent structure, and it would likely be miles away from where the remaining terrorist detainees are being held, Stimson said.

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“Back then, they put a tent city up on the old World War Two airport landing strip and on the golf course,” he said.

Stimson, who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, said he didn’t know if anyone at the conservative think tank played a role in Trump’s new plan as current and former Heritage staff have in other Trump initiatives. "No one talked to me,” he said. “No one asked me anything."

Concerns from civil rights advocates

The announcement sparked immediate concerns among human and civil rights advocates and some former senior U.S. officials.

One recently departed DHS official said it could confer on the immigrant detainees the same status – and lack of basic rights – as those detained as suspected terrorists after the 9/11 al-Qaida attacks in the U.S. in 2001. That official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the order, said authorities have long looked at Guantanamo as a place for use in an emergency to hold those detained in a mass maritime migration to the U.S. and stressed that there are too many potential variables to support or criticize the effort without knowing more details.

Only about 15 suspected terrorist detainees remain at the facility set up at Guantanamo Bay in the years since the 9/11 attacks, including the accused mastermind of the coordinated plane hijackings, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several alleged accomplices.

Gitmo or GTMO, as it is informally known, has a documented history of human rights violations, including allegations of torture and indefinite detention without trial by United Nations officials and other legal experts who have inspected the facility.

Detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay almost certainly could lead to legal challenges regarding the rights of people sent there, both under U.S. and international law. The Department of Justice under the administration of President George W. Bush, was initially accused of using the facility's location outside of the United States to circumvent legal and constitutional protections, prompting a decades-long legal battle about due process and access to legal representation for the people detained there.

Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden have tried to shut down the facility but have been rebuffed, mostly by Republicans in Congress.

(This story was updated to add new information.)

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump orders Guantanamo Bay to house detained migrants