President Donald Trump signed a memo Wednesday that sets in motion preparations for a facility to house thousands of migrants at the U.S. military camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, which he said was an effort to “halt the border invasion.”
“I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States,” the memo to the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department says.
Trump previewed the directive at a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, an immigration detention measure, saying he would “instruct the departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay.”
“Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” he added.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday night that the naval base “is a perfect spot” for Trump’s mass deportation plans.
“Move them off to Guantánamo Bay, where they can be safely maintained until they are deported to their final location, their country of origin,” Hegseth said on Fox News. “We know we can execute it, and the Defense Department is prepared to do everything we can.”
The Guantánamo announcement caught many officials at the Pentagon off-guard, according to five defense officials.
One official said the Guantánamo mission will be a DHS mission. It is unclear whether the military will be involved, but the Pentagon has no orders or guidance from the White House beyond the memo, the official said.
Officials who were surprised by Trump’s announcement said they do not know how many beds for migrants are at Guantánamo or whether it would be a short- or a long-term mission. They said there are no plans to upgrade or change the military facilities there.
“We’ve been ramping down this mission,” one of the officials said of Guantánamo Bay.
A separate Migrant Operations Center at the camp could be expanded — with military construction help — and run by DHS.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a CNN interview Wednesday that “there might be some resources that could be established for the worst of the worst at Guantánamo Bay” and that Trump and DHS were assessing those resources.
Guantánamo Bay became a detention site where detainees were first sent in 2002 under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Joe Biden said when he was in office that he wanted to shut down the detention facility, as did President Barack Obama. Neither was successful.
The Defense Department said this month that 15 detainees remain at Guantánamo Bay after it transferred 11 Yemeni detainees to Oman after they had been held at the base for over two decades.
Trump has made other efforts to crack down on migrants living in the United States illegally since his second term began.
During his first week in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the border that could permit the Pentagon to deploy the military, including the National Guard, to the border. He has also signed a slew of executive orders intended to shutdown illegal immigration at the southern border and to deport millions of people who have crossed into the United States illegally.
