US President Donald Trump Wednesday announced he was going to sign an executive order to have facilities set up to house 30,000 migrants at Guantanamo Bay.
Trump said he would direct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparations during a ceremony earlier in the evening where he signed into law an immigration detention measure called the Laken Riley Act.
Trump said the facility will be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
“Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump added.
Guantanamo Bay gained notoriety for accusations of torture
The Guantanamo Bay military prison was opened in January 2002 on a US Naval base located in southeastern Cuba.
The George W. Bush administration, as it carried out its war on terrorism in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, chose the facility to detain individuals apprehended by the US.
The Bush administration chose the facility because of its unique position since it was under US control, but it was not technically inside the US.
But the hundreds of people who were sent to Guantanamo Bay eventually entered a mirky territory where they had no legal rights.
Over the years, prisoners’s physical treatment, with accusations of interrogation through torture, and the US government’s legal contortion to hold hundreds without charge sparked international outcry including from the United Nations.
ft/rm (AFP, AP)
