Final week, Homeland Safety Secretary Kristi Noem visited the U.S. army base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the place the Trump administration has began sending individuals it describes as prison migrants. Noem said that the positioning will “home the worst of the worst and unlawful criminals which might be in america of America.” President Trump signed an executive memo in January directing the amenities on the naval station to be expanded to full capability.
Sending undocumented immigrants to Guantanamo Bay is a dropping proposition. The transfer raises critical authorized, logistical and human rights points. It would create extra issues than it solves, whereas doing little to enhance our dysfunctional immigration system.
The administration’s transfer might briefly seem profitable in a method: as a short-term PR play. Some Trump supporters have welcomed the thought as a result of they suppose it sends a message about how robust the administration is on migrants. Nevertheless, Trump and Noem are about to seek out out why holding individuals at Gitmo is horrible coverage.
Though Guantanamo is best known as a place the place terrorism suspects are held, its amenities have been used to deal with migrants earlier than. Within the early Nineties, hundreds of Haitians and Cubans have been detained there. However these have been individuals fleeing their house international locations who have been intercepted at sea. That they had by no means set foot within the U.S., not like the migrants Trump is sending there now. This distinction is essential as a result of undocumented individuals who have been within the U.S. are guaranteed sure due course of rights beneath our Structure. Think about a Supreme Courtroom ruling that Guantanamo detainees have the right to problem their detention, and it’s a recipe for countless authorized battles.
The administration is mistaken if it believes that delivery migrants to Gitmo will keep away from scrutiny of their remedy. Guantanamo is a high-profile location that Amnesty Worldwide once termed “the Gulag of our time.” There are already lawsuits in the works over the holding of migrants at Guantanamo; on Monday a federal courtroom temporarily blocked the switch of three Venezuelans to the bottom, a harbinger of extra litigation to return.
To be clear, sending migrants to Guantanamo is just not the identical as deporting them; it doesn’t take away them from the forms of the U.S. immigration system, nor does it exclude them from civilian jurisdiction and place them beneath army jurisdiction as was argued for detainees captured overseas as “enemy combatants.” It’s merely sending them offshore, the place they are going to be beneath the full-time care of the U.S. authorities.
The prices of holding migrants at Guantanamo will probably be staggering. An unlimited funding of funds will probably be required to broaden the bottom’s capability, together with extra money for meals, water, staffing, medical amenities, housing and probably even colleges — as a result of Noem has repeatedly dodged the query of whether or not migrant kids will probably be held in the base’s sweltering tents.
Guantanamo’s distant location implies that just about every part, from constructing supplies to meals provides, should be imported. In 2019, a New York Times analysis discovered that it value $13 million a yr to carry every detainee at Guantanamo, an quantity that President Trump then termed “loopy” and “a fortune.” (The common value per immigration detainee inside the U.S. is around $57,000 a year.)
Simply think about how the prices at Gitmo would skyrocket if Trump makes an attempt to fulfill his promise to ship 30,000 migrants there. By comparability, there are about 40,000 migrants in detention in your complete U.S.
As of Jan. 6, Gitmo held 15 detainees, housed by the Protection Division. To scale as much as anyplace near 30,000 will probably be an unlimited drain on the Homeland Safety finances — on the expense of coverage targets that the president’s supporters say they need, comparable to mass deportations and border safety.
The administration needs to carry migrants at Guantanamo till they are often deported again to their international locations of origin. But there are international locations like Cuba and China that refuse to take deportees back, and different nations might stop to just accept deportees relying on the state of relations with the U.S. Consequently, filling Guantanamo with migrants has the potential to show it into — once again — a everlasting penal colony.
Guantanamo has a infamous fame in the present day due to abuses that occurred there as a part of the post-9/11 “conflict on terror.” That started greater than 20 years in the past, and simply last year, the Worldwide Refugee Help Mission discovered situations on the facility to be inhumane, citing undrinkable water, open sewage and poor medical care.
Holding migrants at Guantanamo may even backfire. In 1993, a federal decide ordered the release of Haitians from the island due to insufficient medical amenities and due course of violations.
Sending migrants to Guantanamo Bay is dear, inefficient and merciless. It’s a false resolution destined to turn into a long-term political and humanitarian catastrophe.
Raul A. Reyes is an immigration legal professional and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion. X: @RaulAReyes; Instagram: @raulareyes1
