Cnn
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The American naval base of Guantanamo Bay is about to obtain a new chapter added to its notorious history.
The installation of Cuba has long attracted the anger of human rights groups which accuse Washington of using it as an outpost outside the reach of American law to protect the alleged abuses of the asylum process and in the war against terrorism.
Now the base could still have had a new incarnation – playing a Key role in the immigration blitz of President Donald Trump.
The United States has maintained a migrant detention center there for decades which is separated from high security prison priority for foreign terrorist suspects, including the alleged brain of September 11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The base could achieve two important objectives for the Trump border application program. First, it could offer a very necessary space to hold migrants before a potential accommodation crisis if the pace of detentions accelerates.
And just as important, it could make Trump difficult – a key consideration in a choreographed operation to send a message to potential migrants to stay at home and to show Trump voters that he honors his campaign promises.
Trump signed a memorandum on Wednesday by asking the Departments of Defense and Internal Security to prepare an installation of 30,000 people at the base – although it is far from clear that it is currently suitable for food n ‘Important where nearly this number of prisoners potentially awaiting deportation.
The Center, traditionally used to house Haitian and Cuban migrants intercepted at sea before reaching the United States, is hampered by its own long history of complaints concerning the conditions and claims that it short-circuits access to migrants asylum process. Nevertheless, the Biden administration planned to use the base last year to treat Haitian migrants.
The symbolism of the location is perfectly resonant with the hard tone of a repression of migrants led by the border of the White House Bourru Tom Homan and the interior security Kristi Noem, who joined a federal team of application of The law on the streets of New York shortly after being confirmed. She praised the arrest of an undocumented migrant confronted with criminal charges on X, saying: “Bags on the ground like this will continue to be removed from our streets.”
It was not clear what categories of migrants would be detained in the Guantanamo Bay Center, but the announcement opened the possibility that it could include certain prisoners arrested inside the United States, then transported to the Cuban military base . Noem, for example, told “CNN News Central” that the base could be reserved to hold what it described as “the worst of the worst”.
Such language is likely to raise concerns to a regular procedure. And the symbolic association between the military detention center and the migrant camp – even if they are separated – is likely to stigmatize migrants more.
“The decision of President Trump to use Guantánamo – global symbol and site of anarchy, torture and racism – sheltering immigrants should horrify us all,” said Vince Warren, Executive Director of Center for Constitutional Rights, in A press release. “Like many authoritarian attacks by Trump against human rights, it has shameful precedents in American history. Long before the second Bush administration used the establishment to hold and abuse nearly 800 Muslim men and boys as part of its “war against terrorism”, the first Bush administration held Haitian refugees there for try to refuse them their rights under international law. »»
Trump announced Guantanamo’s initiative during a white house signature ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, a new law in memory of a Georgia nursing student who was killed by a polar Venezuelan migrant L ‘last year. The law – which adopted the congress with democratic support – requires the detention of undocumented migrants accused of certain crimes, including theft or burglary.
The president has relied strongly on the theater of an installation of migrants restored in Guantanamo, evoking a vision of a formidable destiny for migrants.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to hold the worst illegal criminal threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them to come back, “said Trump. “So we will send them to Guantanamo. It will double our ability immediately, right? And hard. It’s difficult – it’s a difficult place to go out. »»
If associations with Guantanamo invoke tenacity to the Republicans, they arouse equally intense feelings for many liberals and democrats.
The war against terrorism on the basis is the prison that refuses to die, defying the efforts of President Barack Obama and President Joe Biden to close him. The two only succeeded in reducing the population of prisoners who are still accommodated there.
The prison opened in 2002 as a detention center for suspects removed from the battlefields in South Asia, in the Middle East and elsewhere which were treated outside the legal system and often held for years without trial . The camp has become a symbol of human rights violations, and not to provide prisoners with regular procedures has made a task on the reputation of the United States in the world.
The case of Mohammed, one of the most notorious prisoners in the camp, remains unresolved and has been delayed for years. There were initial concerns that the evidence obtained thanks to improved interrogation techniques, which criticisms have called torture, may not be eligible in civil courts. Then a fury broke out on the fears that trying it in New York, as Obama preferred, could be a risk of terrorism. The Obama administration finally decided that Mohammed would pass a military court and blamed the congress for having adopted laws in order to prevent him and other suspects from being brought to the American continent. Incredibly, the case is still lying around, over 23 years after attacks on New York and Washington who killed nearly 3,000 people. Biden administration earlier this month managed to take a break to allow the former Chevron of King of Al Qaeda to plead guilty and escape the risk of execution.
The Biden administration announced its final transfer of the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay on January 6, sending 11 Yemenis to Oman. He said that 15 detainees remain in the establishment.
The installation of distinct migrants from Guantanamo Bay has its own file of checked civilian rights and its use will concern the migrant rights groups which already raise that the repression of the expulsion of Trump imposes access to asylum complaints for undocumented migrants.
In a report at the end of last year, the International refugee assistance project Testimonies cited by refugees under which the conditions of the establishment were inhuman and illegal. The report called on the government to close the center and give asylum seekers the same legal rights as migrants held inside the United States. He indicated that the conditions were characterized by unrelated water, exposure to open wastewater and poor medical care and schooling institutions for children.
But two of Trump’s main immigration advisers told Kaitlan Collins de CNN that those responsible for the application of immigrants and customs would be in charge of the expansion of Guantanamo bay.
“Ice has the highest standards of detention in industry,” said Homan. “You cannot find another state establishment, federal or local which has higher standards of detention than ice.”
An American official, however, told CNN that the facilities may have had 30,000 beds in the 1990s, but that this was far from such a capacity now and that many more staff would be necessary to accommodate this number of migrants .
This indicates another critical question for the sweeping of immigration Trump: the need for urgent and important action in the congress to finance its expansion.
The American naval base of Guantanamo Bay is on the south-eastern coast of Cuba and is permanently rented to the communist government in one of the last enemies and the most extraordinary of the Cold War.
It has long been a thorn in the side of the government of Havana – and, since the opening of the military prison, has also been a powerful element of the Cuba propaganda offensive against the United States, which is likely to Gather as a new White House adopts a much more hostile tone than the Biden administration.
It did not take long for the new possible incarnation of the American base to draw the anger of the Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel, who wrote on X: “In an act of brutality, the new American government announces the imprisonment to The naval base of Guantanamo, located in the illegally occupied Cuba territory, of thousands of migrants which he expels by force, and will place them next to the well -known prisons of illegal torture and detention. »»