The Trump administration is preparing to begin the transfer of potentially thousands of foreigners who are in the United States illegally to the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, starting as early as this week, said U.S. officials familiar with the matter, APA reports citing Washington Post.
The foreign nationals under consideration hail from a range of countries. They include hundreds from friendly European nations, including Britain, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Türkiye and Ukraine, but also other parts of the world, including many from Haiti. Officials shared the plans with The Washington Post, including some documents, on the condition of anonymity because the matter is considered highly sensitive.
The administration is unlikely to inform the foreigners’ home governments about the impending transfers to the infamous military facility, including close U.S. allies such as Britain, Germany and France, the officials said.
The preparations include medical screening for 9,000 individuals to determine whether they are healthy enough to be sent to Guantánamo, notorious for its history as a prison for suspected terrorists and others captured on battlefields in the aftermath of 9/11. Some of these details were reported earlier by Politico.
It is far from clear whether the facilities there can accommodate 9,000 new detainees, an influx that would amount to a massive increase from the several hundred migrants moved to and from the base earlier this year.
But Trump administration officials say the plan is necessary due to a need to free up capacity at domestic detention facilities, which have become overcrowded amid President Donald Trump’s pledge to implement the biggest deportation of undocumented migrants in American history. A document reviewed by The Post said that “GTMO,” the government acronym for the base, “is not at capacity.”
In January, Trump announced he would send as many as 30,000 migrants to the facility. Scores of migrants held at the base in March were sent back to facilities in Louisiana in a move critics of the administration’s immigration crackdown suspected was due to capacity issues.
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