[[link removed]]

BIDEN GAVE TRUMP PLAN TO LOCK UP MIGRANTS AT GUANTÁNAMO  
[[link removed]]


 

Jose Olivares
January 30, 2025
Drop Site News
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ Drop Site published unknown details about the conditions at the
secretive facility, now emerging as a centerpiece of the president's
extreme anti-immigrant policy. _

An American flag flies behind barbed wire fencing at the Office of
Military Commissions building on June 27, 2023 at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, Elise Swain / Getty Images.

 

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to
“expand” a migrant detention center located within the Guantánamo
Bay Naval Base. Prior to the release of the executive order, the
administration announced that 30,000 migrants would be detained at
Guantánamo.

“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal
illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our
capacity immediately,” Trump said.

But according to Department of Homeland Security and Navy documents
from 2021 and 2022 reviewed by Drop Site News, the Trump
administration may not be able to detain that high of a number of
migrants at the facility — at least not immediately. Documents show
the Guantánamo migrant detention center only has the capacity to
expand to hold 400 people, far below the announced tens of thousands.

Although it is unclear whether, or how, Trump might expand migrant
detention at Guantánamo, administration officials have already
received a head start from someone else: former president Joe Biden.

For years now, both Democratic and Republican administrations have
used a little-known section of the Guantánamo Bay Naval base to
detain migrants, primarily from the Caribbean. And due to the secrecy
of the facility, known as the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center
(MOC), conditions at the facility are generally unknown.

In the fall, Drop Site News published
[[link removed]]
previously unreported details of the treatment of migrants at the MOC,
the bureaucratic process of how migrants are detained, and the private
prison companies profiting from the detention center. In August 2024,
the Biden administration granted a private prison company a $163.4
million contract to run the facility.

"For decades, the Guantanamo migrant detention center has been the
hallmark of the most inhumane, racist, and brutal U.S. policies
against people seeking refuge," said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy
analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center. "The Biden
administration could have shut down the facility but tragically
renewed and entered into new contracts to keep it up and running."

Drop Site News revealed that the MOC can detain single adults,
families, and unaccompanied children. Because the MOC is inside of a
military base, migrants awaiting processing are transported in black
out vans “with hand restraints and black out goggles to obscure
their vision,” according to the documents obtained by Drop Site.
Migrants also have limited communication with the outside world, with
their few phone calls monitored for “restricted information,”
including information about the navy base, the documents showed.

“The idea that the Trump administration is going to send 30,000
migrants to Guantánamo is one of the dumbest ideas I’ve heard all
week. It’s utterly absurd,” said J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff
attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who represents
detainees at the Guantánamo military prison and frequently visits the
base. “It’s purely performative. President Trump is trying to use
the image of Guantánamo to project toughness towards refugees and
asylum seekers.”

The Guantánamo Naval Base was first used to detain migrants in the
early 1990s, after Haiti’s military coup in 1991 forced thousands to
flee. The U.S. converted a section of the military base to
“screen” those taken in by the U.S. Coast Guard. Reports from the
1990s describe horrific conditions at the refugee camp and in 1992
President George H.W. Bush ordered the closure of the migrant camp.

But in 1994, the Clinton administration resumed migrant detention at
Guantánamo, primarily for Haitians and Cubans. In 1996, the number of
people detained finally went back down.

In 2002, President George W. Bush began using the Guantánamo Bay
naval base to imprison War on Terror detainees, held under the custody
of the military. In the years following, the War on Terror detainees
denounced torture and mistreatment by military and intelligence
officers. That same year, Bush signed an executive order to, once
again, begin sending migrants intercepted at sea to the Guantánamo
MOC.

Migrants detained at the MOC are divided into two camps. Those deemed
to be refugees and slated to be resettled in third countries fall
under custody of the State Department and the United Nations’
International Organization for Migration. Migrants who are of
“undetermined” status, meaning they have yet to be interviewed by
immigration officials and those who are not found to have a valid case
for refugee resettlement are under the custody of ICE.

From December 2021 to December 2022, the MOC held an average monthly
population of 14 “undetermined” migrants. During that time, there
was also an average population of 20 refugees per day, according to
records reviewed by Drop Site.

“The MOC is a dilapidated dormitory,” said Dixon, who has seen the
facility during his visits to the base. Dixon has also interacted with
refugees under State Department custody, who are granted work
opportunities at the military base, while waiting to be resettled in a
third country.

Thanks to MOC operations contracts, private prison companies have
raked in millions of dollars. Since 2003, three different companies
have received contracts to operate the immigration detention facility,
including the GEO Group and defense contractor MVM.

Last year, the Biden administration granted a multi-million dollar
contract to Akima Infrastructure Protection, a government contractor
that runs other immigration jails in the mainland U.S.

Akima continues to search for staff to work at Guantánamo. According
to a job posting on its website, part of the work requires the guards
to escort migrants “using proper security measures with blackout
goggles and in vehicles with black out windows for overall facility
security and to ensure inability to identify protected migrants.”

“There’s no way there’s 30,000 beds anymore,” a U.S. official
told CNN on Wednesday
[[link removed]],
commenting on Trump’s desire to expand the use of the detention
center. The MOC’s operators “would need a lot more staff to manage
them. They couldn’t do it with what they’ve got now, no way.”

It is unclear what the process of expanding the Guantánamo facility
will look like. Currently, the facility can hold 120 people. And
according to government contracting documents reviewed by Drop Site,
whoever operates the MOC must have the ability to build a “tent
city” and detain up to 400 people in preparation for a possible
“surge” in migrant detention. Even at its peak in the early 1990s
when Haitian asylum seekers were detained en masse, the center only
had the capacity to detain 12,500 people, according to court records
from 1993.

A report from the National Immigrant Justice Center describes
conditions at the facility when it was at full capacity in the 1990s:
“Asylum seekers were housed in tents covered in garbage bags, which
barely protected them from the rain, and enclosed by barbed wire
fencing,” the report reads. “They were forced to eat spoiled and
sometimes maggot-filled food in extreme heat.”

“The numbers that Trump is speaking about now would mean mass
horrors worse than what we witnessed in the 1990s,” said Franzblau.

Because of the secrecy of the Guantanamo naval base, little is known
about the migrant detention center’s conditions. Congress mandates
government inspections for ICE detention centers throughout the
country. Those reports, although oftentimes limited, are publicly
shared. But no public inspection reports or audits for the Guantanamo
migrant facility appear to exist.

“The Migrant Operation Center on Guantánamo is such a black box
that advocacy organizations do not get to visit nor to communicate
with migrants there, including recognized refugees, potentially
families with children,” Yael Schacher, the director for the
Americas and Europe at Refugees International, told Drop Site last
September.

Following the publication of Drop Site’s story on the MOC, The New
York Times reported
[[link removed]]
on the existence of an internal DHS document from 2023 detailing the
treatment of migrants at the facility, confirming Drop Site’s
reporting on the use of “black-out goggles.”

The International Refugee Assistance Project also released a report
about the facility. Drawing on interviews with migrants previously
detained at Guantanamo, the report said the migrants complained of
“toilets spewing sewage,” “fungi growing on ceilings,” and
“rats running around in the room.” A separate document obtained by
Drop Site said that in 2022 officials found “critical physical and
logistical complications at the site.”

In December, a coalition of human rights organizations submitted a
report to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights of
Migrants. In their report, they said the U.S. government “forcibly
disappears migrants” at the Guantanamo facility.

On Wednesday, Trump signed the Laken Riley bill into law, a bipartisan
bill that will increase immigration detention throughout the country.

Drop Site News is a reader-supported publication. To receive new
posts, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

* anti-immigrant
[[link removed]]
* Trump
[[link removed]]
* Guantanamo Bay
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]