Donald Trump has ordered the construction of a detention camp with 30,000 beds at the US navy’s Guantánamo Bay base in Cuba.
The intention is to use it as a holding facility for undocumented immigrants who break US law, The Washington Post reports.
Trump said on Wednesday that the site would “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people” and be “a tough place to get out of”.
The president was speaking before signing the Laken Riley Act, which requires states to detain undocumented immigrants charged with theft-related crimes.
He went on to say: “Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust other countries to hold them, and we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo. This will double our capacity immediately.”
Guantánamo is outside the jurisdiction of the US justice system, and has been used to detain foreign nationals without due process. A 2023 Amnesty International report noted that 35 people were still held there without trial, 21 years after the facility opened.
Pete Hegseth, the newly installed Defence Secretary, told Fox News that the base was “a perfect place” to hold deportees.
He said: “Beyond the facilities used to house terrorists that many are familiar with, the base is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlements.”
He added that the purpose of the camp was “temporary transit” while officials completed paperwork before sending detainees to third countries.
He said a golf course at the base could provide enough land to detain 6,000 people.
So far, no details have been given on what kind of construction will be undertaken, or how much it will cost.
Trump officials have said the aim of the camp is to pressure undocumented people to “self-deport”.
So far, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have made about 6,000 arrests, which has put a strain on the Department of Homeland Security’s custodial system, already close to its 40,000-bed capacity before Trump arrived at the White House.
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