Immigration Advocates Denounce Use of Guantanamo to Detain Migrants: 'Not Really a Detention Center, It's More Like Purgatory'

Immigration advocates are denouncing President Donald Trump's executive order directing the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prepare facilities at Guantánamo Bay for detaining up to 30,000 undocumented immigrants.

"We have 30,000 beds to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people" said Trump after signing the order. "Some of them we don't trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. This will double our capacity immediately. It's a tough place to get out of."

"We denounce Trump's plans to more than double the capacity of the immigration detention system in the U.S. and detain some 30,000 immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, a site of horrific abuse and torture that should have been shut down a long time ago," said Stacy Suh, program director for Detention Watch Network to Border Report, noting that the administration's broader plan to expand detention capacity could bring the total number of immigrants in detention to over 120,000.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the decision, stating that Guantánamo is the "perfect place" to safely detain migrants while processing their removal. "This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, 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 [and] back to the countries where they came from in proper process," Hegseth said in a Department of Defense article.

The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) issued a strong statement against the plan, spearheaded by Executive Director Vince Warren:

"The order – directing the DOD and DHS prepare to hold 30,000 people – sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports. The Center for Constitutional Rights has challenged the U.S. government's use of Guantánamo in all its incarnations, and we, along with our partners, will do so again"

Civil rights attorney Adanté Pointer expressed concern about the measure to The Latin Times:

"It's unclear whether Trump wants to hold immigrants only temporarily at Guantánamo. If they can't be sent back to their home country and they can't go to the U.S., does that mean the government intends to just keep them there until they die? At some point, it's not really a detention center, it's more like purgatory."

Alexandra Moore, director of the Human Rights Institute at Binghamton University, also expressed her concerns to The Latin Times, stating that the decision by the Trump administration "would likely multiply the past and present legal and humanitarian failures of detention on the naval base." Moore also added historic context:

"We know that holding Cuban and Haitian refugees in the early 1990s turned what were framed as humanitarian efforts into abuses. Similarly, the indefinite detention of war on terror suspects without charge has brought documented evidence of harm, not justice, and the sufferers have been both detainees and 9/11 families whose quest for justice cannot be fulfilled. Subjecting 30,000 migrants to prison-like conditions and without adequate legal representation is likely to extend those failures into the future"