US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he planned to detain 30,000 "criminal illegal aliens" at the notorious Guantánamo Bay military prison, used for holding terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks.
Trump made the shock announcement as he signed a bill allowing the pre-trial detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft and violent crime – named after a US student killed by a Venezuelan immigrant.
He said he was signing an executive order instructing the Pentagon and the Homeland Security department to "begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay," Trump said at the White House.
"We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them, because we don't want them coming back," Trump said.
The Republican said the move would "double our capacity immediately" to hold illegal migrants, amid a huge crackdown that he promised at the start of his second term.
Calling Guantánamo a "tough place to get out of," Trump said the measures announced on Wednesday would "bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all."
Trump hosted the parents of Laken Riley, the murdered 22-year-old US nursing student whose name the new migrant crime bill bears, at the White House for the ceremony.
"We will keep Laken's memory alive in our hearts forever," Trump said. "With today's action, her name will also live forever in the laws of our country, and this is a very important law."
It is the first bill Trump has signed since his return to the White House, and was passed by the Republican-led US Congress just two days after Trump's inauguration on January 20.
José Antonio Ibarra, 26, a Venezuelan with no papers, was convicted of murdering Riley in 2024 after she went missing on her morning run near the University of Georgia in Athens.
But it was the Guantánamo announcement that will grab the headlines.
The prison was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States by al-Qaeda. It has been used to indefinitely hold detainees, many of whom were never charged with a crime, seized during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and other operations.
At its peak about 800 people were incarcerated at the site on the eastern tip of Cuba. Testimony from detainees documenting their abuse and torture by US security personnel has long prompted domestic and international criticism.
On Wednesday, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel described Trump's plan as "an act of brutality," saying migrants would be held near facilities used by the United States for "torture and illegal detention."
Former US presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama, both Democrats, pledged to close the prison, but both left office with it still open.
Notorious facility
The Guantánamo Bay military prison was opened in January 2002 on a US Naval base on a coastal spit of land in southeastern Cuba, leased from Havana under a treaty dating back to 1903.
The detention facility was set up after the September 11, 2001 attacks under the administration of then-US president George W. Bush to deal with prisoners who were termed "enemy combatants" and denied many US legal rights.
Obama and Biden both sought to close the facility, but Congress has opposed efforts to shutter Guantánamo and it remains open to this day.
The New York Times reported in September 2024 that the Guantánamo military base had also been used for decades by the United States to detain migrants intercepted at sea, but in an area separate from that used to hold those accused of terrorism.
A relatively small number of migrants have been detained at the facility – the Times reported that just 37 migrants were held there from 2020 to 2023 – but that could increase dramatically following Trump's announcement.
Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major crackdown on illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids and arrests and deportations on military aircraft.
Of the roughly 800 people detained on suspicion of militant activity or terrorism-related offences who have been held at Guantánamo since early 2002, only 15 inmates currently remain, following the release of a number of detainees toward the end of Biden's administration.
Three of the 15 are eligible for transfer, three are eligible for a review for possible release, seven are facing charges and two have been convicted and sentenced, the US Defense Department said earlier this month when it announced the release of 11 Yemenis who had been held there.
Guantánamo houses several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, among them self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Its inmates also include the man accused of masterminding the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. He was captured in 2002 and transferred to Guantánamo in 2006.
The conditions at Guantánamo Bay have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of "unparallelled notoriety."
Among the controversies to emerge from Guantánamo was the practice of force-feeding inmates on hunger strike. The US military defended it as a necessary medical treatment, but critics likened it to torture.
Dubbed "enteral feeding," the process involves inserting a tube up an inmate's nose and into his stomach, then pumping in liquid nutrient.
– TIMES/AFP
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