Human rights groups decry US plan for Guantánamo camp for Cuban migrants | Guantánamo Bay
Dozens of U.S. and international human rights organizations have condemned the Trump administration’s plans to set up a migrant “camp” for fleeing Cubans at the Guantanamo Bay military base if the island nation’s crisis worsens under U.S. pressure, according to a letter sent to members of Congress on Friday.
The 85 groups plan to present the joint letter, shared exclusively with the Guardian, to US senators and House representatives; The letter expresses “deep concern” over comments made last month by a senior Defense Department commander and describes the prospect of further immigration detention at the base as “deeply troubling and unacceptable.”
Commander He told Congress Last month, in what a Republican senator described as “any kind of humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, the Pentagon would “set up a camp” at the US base at Guantanamo Bay to “take care” of the migrants.
United Nations already warned In February, it was rumored that Cuba could be on the verge of a humanitarian “collapse” following Donald Trump’s attempts to prevent oil supplies from reaching the island and the US president repeatedly threatening Cuba’s communist government.
The organization’s letter to MPs includes the statement “Guantanamo should be a relic of the past.” “We call on you to act without delay to ensure that not another dollar goes to the detention facilities at Guantanamo, to ensure that the base is never again used for unlawful mass detention of any group of people, and to end the coercive and punitive sanctions policy and embargo that has led to the humanitarian crisis.”
The letter was signed by groups including the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents dozens of detainees held at Guantanamo during America’s so-called war on terror since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. Less well-known immigration detention facilities are separate from terrorism-related detention centers on the base.
“Both have long been known for inhumane conditions, mistreatment, and due process violations,” Friday’s letter says.
Other signatories include a wide range of U.S. and international advocacy, religious, legal and policy groups, such as the Center for Torture Victims, a division of Amnesty International, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Refugees International, the Justice team of the Brothers of Mercy of the Americas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Detention Watch Network and more.
“Guantanamo has a reputation as the most disgusting and dangerous place the president of the United States could send you—from the outside, below the radar, beyond the law,” said Yumna Rizvi, senior policy analyst at the Torture Victims Center. “The United States could provide emergency aid to the Cuban people, but instead chooses to cause irreparable harm and then do even more by threatening to detain Cubans at Guantanamo who were forced to flee because of its own actions. This is outrageous.”
At a US Senate armed services committee hearing on March 19, General Francis Donovan, commander of the US Southern Command (Southcom), which oversees the Guantanamo Bay base in Cuba, a small portion of US-claimed territory, testified that it could be used to establish a new version of an immigration “camp” for Cubans.
When Republican senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas asked about military preparations in response to any humanitarian crisis in Cuba, Donovan said: he said this Southcom ordered to “support DHS” [the Department of Homeland Security] in a mass migration event”.
“We will follow the coast, either at sea or primarily at Guantanamo Bay, to set up a camp to deal with any overflow from these migrants or any situation in Cuba,” Donovan said.
Trump, who made a radical increase in sanctions imposed on immigrants at the beginning of last year, executive order He decided to expand immigration detention operations at Guantanamo and began sending immigrants from the United States to be held there, often for deportation. About 780 immigrants detained in the United States have been sent to Guantanamo, sometimes for weeks, since last February, according to one report. tally by the New York Times.
The Migrant Operations Center (MOC) is a facility at Guantánamo under the jurisdiction of both the Pentagon and DHS that has been used for decades to detain small numbers of immigrants interdicted at sea.
The Guardian reported last year that the private US government contractor running the MOC was under scrutiny for conditions at other immigration prisons it operates. In addition to using the MOC, the administration quickly began pitching tents for a costly and controversial plan to detain an estimated 30,000 immigrants at Guantanamo at a time when the second Trump administration was focused on a harsh anti-immigration agenda. However, the tents were never used and the facilities were dismantled.
Following the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January, the Trump administration turned its attention to Cuba. “In the meantime, there’s Cuba,” Trump said in March.
“If the Trump administration is worried about Cuban immigration, the solution is simple: stop deliberately impoverishing the Cuban people through embargoes and fuel blockades,” said Michael Galant, senior research and outreach officer at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, one of the groups that signed Friday’s letter.
