Inside Guantanamo Bay: The military base where Donald Trump is sending arrested migrants

Just days after signing an executive order to activate the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, President Donald Trump has begun transferring detained undocumented immigrants to the high-security facility.

At the end of January, Trump signed an order allowing the use of Guantanamo’s military prison to house undocumented immigrants apprehended in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations.

“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” Trump said at the time adding . “

“Some 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 Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately... That’s a tough place to get out of.”

Now, just days after that statement, his plan is moving forward at full speed. On Tuesday, a plane carrying 10 detained migrants departed from Fort Bliss, a military base near the Texas border, bound for the detention center at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

According to two officials familiar with the matter, the transferred migrants were deemed a “high-threat” to the United States. The detainees were reportedly members of the Tren de Aragua, a notorious Venezuelan gang.

A high-security military base: What is Guantanamo Bay used for?

Guantanamo Bay is one of the most secure military installations in the world. It includes a Migrant Operations Center, where some asylum seekers intercepted at sea have been processed in the past. However, following Trump’s executive order, officials have begun setting up tent facilities outside this zone, adjacent to the detention center, to hold incoming migrants.

Currently, the facility houses terrorism suspects detained after the September 11 attacks. In the past, it has also been used as a shelter for Haitian refugees following the devastating 2010 earthquake. Given its history of housing detainees, the Trump administration has faced little logistical resistance in repurposing the facility for migrant detention.

Original article written by Daniela Barrera, translated with the assistance of AI and edited by Greg Heilman.

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