Detention center at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base. Photo: US DoD / Wikimedia Commons
The project has caused indignation in Cuba, which claims sovereignty over the Guantánamo Base, occupied more than 100 years ago by the US military.
Originally published in People's Dispatch.
On January 29, the White House directed the Defense and Homeland Security Departments to expand the capacity at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in order to receive 30,000 migrant detainees.
In a press conference the following day, President Trump cited his distrust in the nations of origin to reliably accept the forced return of their migrants, as a key factor in the expansion of Guantánamo Bay.
Cuba has strongly condemned Trump’s decision, criticizing the US presence on Guantánamo Bay entirely, which it considers an illegal occupation. The base has historically detained refugees, and more recently, alleged terrorists without formal charges.
Trump orders migrant detention expansion at Guantánamo
The White House sent a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security, requesting the immediate expansion of the capacity of the US military base at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba to accommodate 30,000 immigrants “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs.”
The memorandum also states that this measure seeks “to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”
In a press conference on January 30, Trump stated, “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens who threaten the American people. Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries [they’re from] to hold them, because we don’t want them to come back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
Trump’s announcement follows a tense exchange between him and Colombian President Petro.
On Sunday, Petro returned a US military plane carrying shackled Colombian migrants. Petro insisted on dignified conditions for the returned nationals before his government would accept them.
On the logistics of the Guantánamo expansion, Trump added, “This will double our capacity immediately. It’s tough [for detainees]. It’s a tough place to get out.”
The Cuban government responds
Trump’s decision has provoked the ire of the Cuban government, which has historically demanded that the United States return control of the Guantánamo naval base to the Caribbean country. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel posted on X saying, “In an act of brutality, the new US government announced the imprisonment of thousands of migrants that it is forcibly expelling at the Guantánamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied Cuban territory… [the migrants will be] next to the known prisons of torture and illegal detention.”
The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a communiqué in which it categorically rejected the imprisonment of migrants in Guantánamo:
“It is a demonstration of the brutality with which this government is acting to supposedly correct problems created by the economic and social conditions of this country, the government’s management and its foreign policy, including hostility towards countries of origin.”
In addition, the communiqué emphasizes that “The territory where it is proposed to confine them does not belong to the United States. It is a portion of Cuban territory in the eastern province of Guantánamo, which remains illegally militarily occupied and against the will of the Cuban nation.” They pointed out that the base is internationally known, “For housing a center of torture and indefinite detention, outside the jurisdiction of US courts, where people have been held for up to 20 years, never tried or convicted of any crime.”
Guantánamo: claimed territory and torture site
Following their military victory in the Spanish-American War (1895-1898), the US Army established itself in Guantánamo Bay, in Cuban territory, as early as 1898. In 1903, the United States succeeded in making the Cuban government cede the territory. In the form of a perpetual lease, a portion of Cuba’s sovereign national territory was exchanged for an annual payment.
Following the 1959 Cuban Revolution however, Cuba demanded the full and immediate return of the territory occupied by the US military, refusing to collect the money that was stipulated in the initial agreement.
According to Cuban authorities, the occupation of the base violates Article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention, which specifies that any treaty between two countries will be annulled if it is shown to have been signed by force or intimidation. Cuba claims that the Platt Amendment (a provision taken by the US Congress in 1901 and imposed unilaterally on the Cuban Constitution) was made amid a US military occupation of the island. Therefore, the Guantánamo Base agreement is invalid.
The Guantánamo Base is the only military base that the United States has in a socialist country.
A history of migrant detention and injustice
This is not the first time the US will use the base to detain migrants. In the late 20th century, the base was used to detain Cuban and Haitian migrants seeking to reach the United States by boat.
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the United States has used part of the prison to hold people who allegedly have links to groups such as Al-Qaeda and the Taliban army. Several journalists, lawyers, and human rights organizations have denounced the interrogations, confinement, and torture practiced in Guantánamo Bay.
According to the United States, since Guantanamo Bay resides in Cuba, the detainees held there, legally speaking, are outside their country, so US constitutional rights do not apply directly to the detainees. However, in the famous Rasul v. Bush case, the US Supreme Court declared that Guantánamo detainees have the right to access US courts since only the US has control over the territory where the base is located.
What remains to be seen is how the Trump administration will actually move 30,000 migrants to the Guantánamo Base, and what their conditions will be like. The odds of humane conditions are bleak if one takes into account the humiliation that deported migrants have reported so far as well as the history of the base.
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