In line with Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “an ideal place” the place the Trump administration might maintain as much as 30,000 migrants whereas they await being deported from the United States to their dwelling nations.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing the Protection Division and the Division of Homeland Safety to organize the bottom to carry what he had earlier stated is perhaps 30,000 migrants described as “high-priority legal aliens unlawfully current in america.”
Hegseth, who at one time served as a junior Army officer on the detention facility at Guantanamo that housed enemy combatants from the warfare on terror, defined that deported migrants wouldn’t be housed at that location.
The Naval Base of Guantanamo in Cuba, Sept. 11, 2002.
Adalberto Roque/AFP by way of Getty Photos
“That is one a part of Guantanamo Bay. The opposite a part of Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a naval station the place it has lengthy been, for many years, a mission of that naval station to offer for migrants and refugees and resettlement,” Hegseth stated in a stay interview on Fox Information’ “The Will Cain Present”
Over the past week, U.S. army plane have been been used to hold out deportation flights, taking deported migrants again to their dwelling nations. The army flights are along with the chartered flights that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has undertaken for years. Nonetheless, the tempo of these flights may be gradual because the U.S. has to safe commitments from nations that they’ll conform to take again their residents.
“We would like someplace else to carry them safely within the interim,” Hegseth stated. “Guantanamo Bay, Will, is an ideal place.”
Hegseth described how the bottom could possibly be used to accommodate deportees on their approach to their dwelling nations or a 3rd nation “and it is taking a little bit time to maneuver with that course of and with the paperwork”
He stated that as that course of drags on, it’s “higher they be held at a secure location like Guantanamo Bay, which is supposed and constructed for migrants. Meant and constructed to maintain that away from the American folks as they’re processed correctly, to the place they got here from.”
“It is a short-term transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, the place we are able to plus up 1000’s and tens of 1000’s, if needed, to humanely transfer illegals out of our nation the place they don’t belong, again to the nations the place they got here from in correct course of,” he added.
Hegseth described the grounds of the Navy base’s golf course as a spot that might presumably home as many as 6,000 migrants.
“So this can be a plan in motion, however not in motion as a result of we’re behind, however as a result of we’re ramping up for the likelihood to increase mass deportations, as a result of President Trump is lifeless severe about getting unlawful criminals out of our nation,” Hegseth stated. “And the DOD isn’t solely prepared to, he is proud to companion with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”
