Reuters. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday (January 29) he will order the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay for as many as 30,000 migrants.
The U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, already houses a migrant facility - separate from the high-security U.S. prison for foreign terrorism suspects - that has been used on occasion for decades, including to hold Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea.
The detention facility at Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush to detain foreign militant suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. There are 15 detainees left in the prison.
Trump's two Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, sought to shut down the Guantanamo prison and were only able to reduce its inmate population, but Trump has vowed to keep it open.
The jail has long been condemned by human rights groups for indefinite detention and came to symbolize the early excesses the U.S. “war on terror” because of harsh interrogation methods that critics say amounted to torture.
The facility for migrants is separate from the detention center on the base.