First migrant detainees to be sent to Guantanamo Bay under Trump plan

Washington — The U.S. authorities is moving rapidly to instrumentality President Trump's order to crook facilities astatine the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base into a large-scale migration detention center, with plans to transport the archetypal radical of migrant detainees determination connected Tuesday, 2 U.S. officials told CBS News.

Last week, Mr. Trump instructed his medication to dramatically grow detention abstraction wrong the naval basal to detain arsenic galore arsenic 30,000 "high-priority" unauthorized immigrants with transgression records. Since then, officials from crossed the government, including the Departments of Defense, State and Homeland Security, person scrambled to instrumentality the president's directive.

One of the U.S. officials said those sent to the naval basal would beryllium unauthorized immigrants arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, oregon ICE, the bureau astatine the halfway of the president's vow to oversee the largest deportation effort successful American history. The bureau has ramped up migration operations crossed the state nether Mr. Trump, averaging astir 1,000 regular arrests successful the past week — up from the 312 mean successful erstwhile President Joe Biden's last twelvemonth successful office.

Over the past respective days, determination has been an interior statement astir whether the Pentagon oregon DHS would person ineligible and carnal custody implicit the migrant detainees, and what benignant of ineligible rights they would have. 

For decades, the Guantanamo basal has included a facility, known arsenic the Migrant Operations Center, wherever U.S. migration officials person screened immoderate asylum-seekers intercepted astatine sea. That country is abstracted from Guantanamo Bay's detention center, the post-9/11 subject situation wherever the U.S. inactive holds much than a twelve coercion suspects.

A comparatively tiny fig of migrants are housed successful barrack-like facilities portion they acquisition interviews with asylum officers. Asylum-seekers who passed those archetypal interviews person been referred for resettlement successful third countries similar Australia and Canada. The U.S. has agelong had a argumentation of not allowing those caught astatine oversea to question asylum successful the U.S. successful bid to deter maritime migration.

After Mr. Trump's caller directive, U.S. officials person been mounting up structure facilities to clasp migrants successful Guantanamo Bay beyond the Migrant Operations Center.

In the aboriginal 1990s, the Clinton medication held thousands of Haitian migrants wrong the Guantanamo base, including successful a notorious camp for those diagnosed with HIV, who were banned from entering the U.S. astatine the time.