Trump says 'dangerous criminal illegal aliens' will be detained at Guantánamo Bay.

 

Trump Plans to Detain Criminal Migrants at Guantánamo Bay Facility

President Trump has announced plans to use a migrant holding facility at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to detain up to 30,000 criminal migrants deported from the United States.

In a White House directive, he instructed the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to begin implementing the initiative, describing it as a necessary step to "halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty."

The administration clarified that deported migrants would not be housed in Guantánamo’s military prison, which currently holds foreign terrorism suspects, including alleged 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Instead, they would be placed in a separate area of the naval base, which has long operated a detention facility for migrants intercepted at sea, primarily Haitians, Cubans, and Dominicans. That facility has been largely vacant for years, but Trump now intends to repurpose it to detain "high-priority criminal aliens."

The announcement was made Wednesday on Fox News, where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth outlined the plan.

Hegseth emphasized that detainees would not be held indefinitely, unlike prisoners at Guantánamo’s military facility, some of whom have been there for decades without charges. Instead, he described Guantánamo as a "waystation" where deported migrants would remain until the administration arranges for other countries to accept them.

"This is not the camps. You're not putting criminals in camps where ISIS and other criminals [are]," Hegseth said. "This is a temporary transit … where we can plus-up thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country, where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in a proper process."

However, the administration has not defined what it considers "temporary transit."

It is also unclear whether Guantánamo’s migrant holding facility has the capacity for 30,000 detainees. When Trump first announced the plan, he insisted it did:

"We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people," he stated. "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 Guantánamo."

Trump Plans to Expand Guantánamo Migrant Facility Amid Concerns

Trump later stated that he intends to "expand" the migrant holding facility at Guantánamo Bay to reach its "full capacity."

Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, cast doubt on the feasibility of the plan, citing reports from migrants previously detained at the facility.

"There haven't been 30,000 beds [there] in decades," Warren said. "The facility is decrepit. It's been falling apart. It's in disrepair."

He warned that detaining large numbers of people in such conditions could lead to legal challenges. "The conditions would be so substandard that it would give people opportunities to file lawsuits around the conditions of their confinement while they're being deported," Warren explained.

While Warren acknowledged that the U.S. has the right to deport individuals with certain criminal convictions—and that the Trump administration has expanded the list of deportable offenses—he argued that "it does not give the United States the right to put them in a legal black hole in an offshore prison just to get them out of sight and out of mind. That's not something that human rights law would allow."

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that a golf course on the naval base could be repurposed to accommodate up to 6,000 deported migrants. This indicates that the administration is exploring multiple locations at Guantánamo to house tens of thousands of detainees.

The White House has not disclosed the projected cost of the plan. However, it would require significant funding for construction, food and lodging, security personnel, and transportation.

Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, confirmed that deported migrants would be flown directly to Guantánamo. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem stated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would oversee the facility, with funding expected to come from congressional appropriations.

The administration has yet to announce when deportations to Guantánamo will begin.