Trump orders Guantanamo Bay to prepare for migrant detention

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on Wednesday directing the federal government to prepare the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to house tens of thousands of migrants. The directive calls for the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to expand detention space at Guantanamo for "high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States."

"Most people don’t even know about it. 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 stated from the White House before signing the Laken Riley Act. The legislation, which mandates the detention of undocumented migrants charged with certain crimes, marks the first major legislative victory of Trump’s second term. The bill passed earlier this month with bipartisan support.

"Today’s signings bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all," Trump added.

According to senior administration officials, the management of a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay would be overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

"We’re just going to expand upon existing migrant centers," explained border czar Tom Homan, noting that the facility would be supervised by ICE’s Miami-based operations. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem suggested that the facility could be used to house "the worst of the worst."

"There might be some resources that could be established for the worst of the worst at Guantanamo Bay, and that’s something that he is evaluating along with our team at the Department of Homeland Security," Noem said on CNN.

Although Guantanamo Bay is widely recognized for its high-security detention camp holding terrorism suspects, the base also includes a migrant processing center. In the past, U.S. officials considered using the facility to process Haitian migrants fleeing worsening conditions in their country. The U.S. military also prepared the site to accommodate migrants following the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

However, a U.S. official told CNN that Guantanamo Bay is not currently equipped to house 30,000 migrants.

"There’s no way there’s 30,000 beds anymore," the official stated, explaining that such capacity existed in the 1990s but no longer. The official added that accommodating such numbers would require a significant increase in military personnel.

"If they sent a lot of migrants to Guantanamo Bay, they would need a lot more staff to manage them," the official said. "They couldn’t do it with what they’ve got now, no way."

Trump’s directive has drawn international criticism, particularly from the Cuban government. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the plan, calling it an "act of brutality."

"In an act of brutality, the new U.S. government announces the imprisonment at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory in Cuba, of thousands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention," Díaz-Canel wrote on X.

As the administration moves forward with its immigration policies, the debate over the use of Guantanamo Bay for migrant detention is expected to intensify, with legal, logistical, and humanitarian concerns at the forefront of discussions.