Trump plan to open migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay an ‘act of brutality’, Cuban president says
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest news from US politics.
First up, the Cuban president has described President Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as an “act of brutality”.
Writing on X, Miguel Díaz-Canel said the move would place people deported from the US “next to well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention”.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order instructing officials to prepare a facility capable of holding 30,000 people at the naval base, which over the past two decades has been used primarily to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Trump said the new facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Stay with us for more on that announcement and all the day’s developments.
Key events
President Trump’s abrupt decision to pause all US foreign aid programmes could exacerbate violence in Latin America, driving more migration from a region already struggling with the rise of organised crime, experts have warned.
The US disbursed $1.5bn (£1.2bn) in humanitarian, military, environmental, and economic aid to South American countries in the 2023 financial year, but Trump has suspended almost all US foreign aid for at least 90 days to review whether it is “aligned” with the interests of his administration.
Already, at least three humanitarian organisations have suspended support operations for more than 41,000 people displaced by a recent outbreak of guerrilla violence in Colombia.
Another programme aimed at finding jobs to integrate hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants into Colombian society was also paralysed. In Brazil, two organisations working to assist Venezuelans fleeing Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship shut down their operations and a programme aimed at tackling the commercial sexual exploitation of children was ordered to stop.
“Organized gang violence has been a tragic burden for the region, as well as non-state armed groups,” said Marcia Wong, former deputy assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
“Without assistance, vacuums can develop – allowing exploitation and violence.”
Read the full story here:
RFK and Gabbard to face confirmation hearings
Some of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks are set to appear before Senate committees as part of their confirmation process today.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the health committee from 10am EST (3pm GMT).
Kennedy appeared before the finance committee on Wednesday and, during a three-and-a-half hour hearing, was grilled over past comments about the efficacy of vaccines as well as his grasp of the workings of the US healthcare system.
Also appearing at 10am EST, this time before the intelligence committee, will be Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
A Democratic congresswoman until 2021, Gabbard gradually moved away from her old party and last year endorsed Trump, joining him on the campaign trail at several rallies.
Gabbard has faced opposition for comments on topics including Edward Snowden, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Syrian Civil War.
In January 2017, she revealed she had travelled to Syria to meet its now-deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A few months later, she said she was “skeptical” about whether the regime had been behind chemical weapons attacks that targeted civilians during the war.
Here’s the full text of that post from the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, condemning President Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
“In an act of brutality, the new US government announces that it will imprison thousands of migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied #Cuba territory, and forcibly expel them, placing them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he wrote on X.
The country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said the base was in “illegally occupied #Cuba territory outside the jurisdiction of US courts” and showed “contempt for the human condition and international law”.
En acto de brutalidad, nuevo gobierno de EEUU anuncia encarcelamiento en Base Naval en Guantánamo, ubicada en territorio de #Cuba ilegalmente ocupado, de miles de migrantes que expulsa forzosamente, a los que ubicará junto a las conocidas cárceles de tortura y detención ilegal.
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 29, 2025
What has Trump announced about Guantánamo Bay?
As part of his plans to reduce illegal migration to the US, President Trump has ordered the creation of a new detention facility capable of holding 30,000 people at Guantánamo Bay.
He said the centre would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
Guantánamo Bay is best-known as the site of a US naval base on a coastal strip of land in southeastern Cuba that was leased by the US under a treaty in 1903.
A military prison set up on the base in the wake of the 11 September attacks has since been used to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both tried to close the prison but were stopped by Congress.
An existing facility, separate from the prison, is already used by the US to detain migrants intercepted at sea, although it does not appear in public government records and details have only recently surfaced.
As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.
Trump plan to open migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay an ‘act of brutality’, Cuban president says
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest news from US politics.
First up, the Cuban president has described President Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as an “act of brutality”.
Writing on X, Miguel Díaz-Canel said the move would place people deported from the US “next to well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention”.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order instructing officials to prepare a facility capable of holding 30,000 people at the naval base, which over the past two decades has been used primarily to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Trump said the new facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Stay with us for more on that announcement and all the day’s developments.
