The first deportation flights carrying migrants from the to were “underway” on Tuesday, the White House confirmed, as ‘s new administration looks to .
The first flight was reportedly carrying nearly a dozen , a security official told the Reuters news agency, the first of over 5,000 people held by US authorities in Texas and California which the Pentagon says it intends to deport.
Military flights have been used to to Guatemala, Peru, Honduras and India, while Trump has instructed the Department of Homeland Security to expand a detention facility at Guantanamo to potentially hold more than 30,000 migrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has insisted the plan is not to hold people at Guantanamo indefinitely and that the administration will adhere to US law.
What is Guantanamo Bay?
Guantanamo Bay, a US naval base in , is generally known for its notorious high-security detention center established in 2002 to hold suspected foreign militants captured during the so-called “War on Terror” waged in , and elsewhere in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
But Guantanamo also houses a separate migrant facility which has been used for decades to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea after attempting to flee crises in their homelands.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was assigned to Guantanamo Bay when he was on active duty, has called it a “perfect place” to house migrants.
But Amy Fischer, Director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Program at Amnesty International USA, decried the use of Guantanamo to house the migrants as “profoundly cruel.”
“It will cut people off from lawyers, family and support systems, throwing them into a black hole so the US government can continue to violate their human rights out of sight,” she said.
The US government has long held migrants, caught at sea, at Guantanamo Bay, but this is the first time it flown migrants to the base.
According to US Southern Command, some 300 American military personnel are currently stationed at Guantanamo supporting “illegal alien holding operations,” and additional troops have arrived at the facility in the past few days.
The Trump administration has not said how much it would cost to expand the Guantanamo facility, but the deportation flights alone aren’t cheap. Reuters reported that a military deportation flight to Guatemala last week likely cost at least $4,675 (€4,504) per detainee.
Edited by: Louis Oelofse
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