The first US flights carrying detained migrants to America’s notorious Guantanamo military base in Cuba were under way on Tuesday as US President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on illegal migration, the White House said.
Guantanamo is primarily known as a detention centre for suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, but the base also has a history of being used to hold migrants, and Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” there.
“Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are under way,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business.
Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.
The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.
The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed.
The conditions there have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety”.
