US military readies first migrant deportation flight to Guantanamo Bay

The U.S. army will fly a small group of migrants to its base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Tuesday, because the Trump administration pledges to make use of the location as a mass deportation detention heart.

Ten migrants are on the flight, transported like earlier teams on giant C-17 cargo planes, stated a protection official, granted anonymity to debate the plans. In contrast to different deportation flights, which have despatched folks again to nations from Ecuador to India, the group on this journey is much smaller and consists of solely migrants thought-about “excessive menace” by the U.S. authorities, in line with the official.

Talking on the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth known as Guantanamo Bay the “excellent place” to accommodate deported migrants, together with what he known as “hardened criminals.”

Hegseth spent a yr on the naval station as an active-duty Nationwide Guardsman from 2004 to 2005, after it was transformed right into a high-security jail for suspected terrorists who participated within the 9/11 assaults. The location has survived regardless of a number of makes an attempt from previous administrations to shut it, although its use has dwindled lately.

That may quickly change throughout President Donald Trump’s second time within the White Home. Final week the president ordered the army to organize the location for a surge of deported migrants, a transfer that might not be authorized because the base sits on Cuban territory.

A separate protection official stated the migrants transported Tuesday won’t be held in the identical space because the suspected terrorists already on the facility and can solely be there briefly.

The Pentagon has since rushed to meet the order, sending round 300 service members to date to help within the effort, per the primary protection official. The naval station might ultimately home some 30,000 migrants, in line with Pentagon estimates.

The location was final used for the same mission within the Nineties, when the U.S. authorities briefly held round 12,000 Haitian refugees there who have been looking for asylum after a coup.