Trump announces opening Guantanamo Bay detention centre for illegal migrants
Mr Trump made the announcement before he signed the Laken Riley Act into law as his administration’s first piece of legislation.
US President Donald Trump has said he is directing the opening of a detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to hold up to 30,000 migrants who are living illegally in the United States.
Mr Trump made the announcement just before he signed the Laken Riley Act into law as his administration’s first piece of legislation.
The Laken Riley Act means that people who are in the US illegally and are accused of theft and violent crimes would have to be detained and potentially deported even before a conviction.
“We’re going to send them out to Guantanamo,” the president said in the White House East Room.
“Some of them are so bad that 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,” he said.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal aliens threatening the American people,” the president said.
The US military base has been used to house detainees from the US war on terrorism.
The move would immediately “double” US detention lockup capacities, he said. Guantanamo, he added, is “a tough place to get out of”.
In subsequent comments to reporters outside the White House, new Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said of expanded detention facilities that “we’re building it out” and that the administration would seek funding through spending bills Congress is set to consider.
The administration’s border czar, Tom Homan, said US Customs and Immigration Enforcement would run the facility in Cuba and that the “the worst of the worst” could go to Guantanamo.
Still, the details of Mr Trump’s plan were not immediately clear. The US military base has been used to house detainees from the US war on terrorism for years.
But authorities have also detained migrants at sea at a facility known as the Migrant Operations Centre on Guantanamo, a site the US has long leased from the Cuban government. Many of those housed there have been migrants from Haiti and Cuba.
The US Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that enemy combatants in the war on terror held without charge at the military prison at Guantanamo had the right to challenge their detention in federal court.
But the justices did not decide whether the president had the authority to detain people at all.
Before Mr Trump took office, the Democratic administrations of Barack Obama and Joe Biden worked to reduce the number of terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo.
Mr Trump has pledged that his administration will carry out the largest mass deportation effort in US history.
Mr Trump, who won back the White House by tapping into public anger over illegal immigration, has made the promised crackdown a centrepiece of his political career, and is now suggesting the new law might only be the beginning.
The Laken Riley Act was described by Mr Trump as a “landmark law” and “tremendous tribute” to the murdered Georgia nursing student after whom it is named.
Laken Riley, 22, went out for a run in February 2024 and was killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national who was in the country illegally. Ibarra was found guilty in November and sentenced to life without parole.
“She was a light of warmth and kindness,” Mr Trump said during a signing ceremony that included Ms Riley’s parents and sister.
“It’s a tremendous tribute to your daughter what’s taking place today, that’s all I can say. It’s so sad we have to be doing it.”
He added: “It’s a landmark law that we’re doing today. It’s going to save countless lives.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Wednesday that the Trump administration has revoked a decision that would have protected roughly 600,000 people from Venezuela from deportation, putting some at risk of being removed from the country in about two months.
Ms Noem signed a notice reversing a move by her predecessor, Alejandro Mayorkas, in the waning days of the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status.
The change is effective immediately and comes amid a slew of actions as the Trump administration works to make good on promises to crack down on illegal immigration.
“Before he left town, Mayorkas signed an order that said for 18 months they were going to extend this protection to people that are on Temporary Protected Status, which meant that they were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months,” Ms Noem told Fox and Friends.
“We stopped that,” she said.
