Cnn
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The American army base in El Paso, Texas – Fort Bliss – was chosen as a site to hold and house thousands of migrants, and contracts have already been signed to start building migrant installations on the basis, three defense officials said in CNN.
The US military has now taken control of contracts supporting the construction and maintenance of Fort Bliss installations, as well as a contract to supervise a central treatment center in El Paso, officials said.
These contracts were initially awarded to private entities by American customs and border protection and immigration and customs application. The current plan for Fort Bliss is to build installations that can contain up to 5,000 migrants, said one of the defense officials.
“With regard to the construction of ice, an installation on happiness, I can say that the Secretary of Defense authorized the American army to assume the control and management of customs and the protection of American borders and American contracts for immigration and customs application supporting the construction, maintenance and maintenance of the installations and the maintenance of the CBP El Paso Central Center and on the land of the army in Fort Bliss” defense.
Although the installations are on American military goods, army staff will not lead them due to laws that prevent military personnel from engaging in law enforcement activities. Propublica reported Earlier Friday, ICE had a contract to a private company to operate a migrant detention camp in Fort Bliss.
CNN previously reported that officials planned to use American military bases to shelter Migrants instead of Guantanamo Baywhere the administration periodically sent migrants before moving on to their final destinations.
It is not clear so strong Bliss would be used in place of Guantanamo bay, or in addition to the naval base. Fort Bliss has already been used to temporarily host migrants, including during the wave of migrant children not accompanied by the Biden administration.
Fort Bliss was also used to house thousands of Afghan nationals during Operation Allies Welcome, an initiative launched under the Biden administration to support and reinstall more than 11,000 Afghans after the United States withdrew the Afghanistan troops in 2021.
The efforts of the Trump administration to expel migrants to Guantanamo, on the other hand, have encountered significant obstacles. The administration first crossed the unprecedented measure of the sending of migrants to Guantanamo Bay on American military planes in February, arousing a fierce reaction from the defenders of immigrants and provoking legal action by immigrant defense groups.
The administration had to interrupt the construction tents for migrants on the island last month, because they had no air conditioning or electricity and did not meet the standards of detention of the ICE.
The conditions in the installations of Guantanamo Bay were largely examined. Some detainees refused meals, which led to weight loss, the American military officer supervising the working group in charge of detention operations in Guantanamo Bay, Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Green, in court documents. Green also said that a deduction president had been used six times on February 28 – each time due to Venezuelans prisoners which engaged in self -harm.
In mid-March, the administration had already spent around $ 16 million on Guantanamo’s operation, according to Democratic Representative Sara Jacobs, who visited the base as part of a conference delegation visit.
“What we really saw is that there is a very low capacity there, and it is really expensive, and I could not see any operational reason to use Guantanamo Bay for immigration detention,” Jacobs told CNN last month. “It was clearly just because Donald Trump liked the optics.”
Priscilla Alvarez of CNN contributed to this story.