(NewsNation) — President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to make room at Guantanamo Bay for “high-priority criminal aliens” who are rounded up during mass deportations.
The United States has previously held a small number of migrants within Naval Station Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Following the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the U.S., a detention facility at the site has housed terror suspects and captured combatants.
As he signed the Laken Riley Act on Wednesday, Trump said there is potentially space for up to 30,000 migrants who are considered dangerous, but the exact capacity wasn’t immediately clear.
The Migrant Operations Center at Guantanamo traditionally has held foreigners detained at sea, many from Haiti and Cuba, The Associated Press reported.
“I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States,” the president said in a memo.
Trump said the directive “is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
Mick Mulvaney, a former top aide to President Trump during his first term, said the president previously eyed Guantanamo Bay to house immigrants in the U.S. illegally, but the idea died because of pushback, even from Republicans.
“That’s one of the big differences between Trump 2.0 and Trump 1.0. He’s willing to push harder now than he was in the first term,” Mulvaney told NewsNation’s “The Hill.”
U.S. Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, was dubious of the president’s Guantanamo plan. He said he’s not sure where the facility fits into the Trump deportation initiative given that countries are taking deportees back from the U.S.
“There’s a lot of things that they’re proposing right now where they haven’t finished out the details. I guess that might be one of them,” Ivey said.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, blasted Trump’s announcement on the social media platform X, the AP said.
“The US government’s decision to imprison migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, in an enclave where it created torture and indefinite detention centers, shows contempt for the human condition and international law,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
