The Trump administration has started transporting undocumented immigrants from the United States to a military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed on Tuesday.
Speaking to Fox Business Network, Leavitt stated that at least two deportation flights were “under way” but did not provide additional details.
Her remarks appeared to corroborate a report, which cited an anonymous official familiar with the operation. According to the report, one flight from Fort Bliss, Texas, carried approximately a dozen immigrants. The newspaper also stated that a second flight had departed on Monday.
Later, it is reported that one of the flights carried “about nine or 10” individuals who had been detained in the United States without valid immigration documents.
When contacted for comment, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) referred The Guardian to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond.
“President Trump is not messing around, and he’s no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world,” Leavitt told Fox.
“Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantánamo Bay with illegal migrants are under way.”
Last week, Donald Trump signed an executive order to prepare a large detention facility at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay. According to Trump, the facility could house up to 30,000 people deported from the U.S.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
The arrival of the first flights, which reportedly carried deportees of unspecified nationalities, coincided with El Salvador’s announcement that it was willing to accept undocumented migrants from any country—including incarcerated U.S. citizens.
The declaration by El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, came following a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Guantanamo Bay Prison (Photo: AP)
Leavitt told that Trump was committed to carrying out what he has previously called “the largest deportation effort in American history,” targeting 15 million to 20 million people. He has also indicated that the military would be involved in achieving this goal.
“El Salvador has not disagreed to the repatriation of [only] their own citizens but also illegal criminals from other nations who will then be sent to their prisons,” she said.
“Venezuela as well has agreed to repatriation flights, and Colombia also agreed to cooperate with the repatriation of illegal Colombian nationals that we have found in the interior of our country.”
Rubio praised El Salvador’s willingness to accept deportees. “No country’s ever made an offer of friendship such as this. [It is] the most unprecedented and extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world,” he said.
Meanwhile, immigration advocates have raised concerns about the legality of deporting undocumented individuals to countries they are not originally from.
“Obviously, we’ll have to study it on our end; there are obviously legalities involved. We have a constitution, we have all sorts of things,” Rubio said on Monday. The U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay has the capacity to hold approximately 120 people.
The facility, often referred to by critics as “America’s gulag,” has housed individuals accused of involvement in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, as well as others classified as “enemy combatants.” Some detainees have remained there for years without trial.
Trump’s decision to use Guantánamo to detain civilians deported from the U.S. has been condemned by advocates, who argue that it further stigmatizes immigrants.
“This is political theater and part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to paint immigrants as threats in the United States … and fan anti-immigrant sentiment,” Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First, told The Guardian.
