Radio Cadena Agramonte emisiora de Camagüey
Havana, Feb 12th. - Wearing gray uniforms, with their hands cuffed and escorted by security agents, this is how the first undocumented immigrants deported by the Donald Trump government arrived at the Guantanamo Naval Base last Tuesday. The White House wants to house some 30,000 immigrants there. “We will no longer allow the United States to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations around the world,” they said.
“In an act of brutality,” as President Miguel Díaz-Canel has defined, Trump intends to place these people at the base next to the well-known torture and illegal detention prisons that the United States maintains in the enclave, located in illegally occupied Cuban territory.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst illegal foreign criminals who threaten the American people,” Trump said, insisting that these are “the worst of the worst.”
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust countries to hold them because we don’t want them to come back, so we’re going to send them to Guantanamo,” Trump added, also warning that this is a “hard place to leave.”
US media report that some 300 members of the army have already arrived at Guantanamo to provide security and begin setting up a new tent city for migrants. American forces have erected 50 green army tents inside a fenced compound, next to a barracks-style building called the Migrant Operations Center.
Migrant advocates maintain that sending them to Guantánamo is unacceptable. “The United States has a deplorable record of illegally detaining different groups of people at Guantanamo to avoid oversight and public attention and this latest episode is no exception,” said Hannah Flamm, senior policy director for the International Refugee Assistance Project, in a statement.
“The Trump administration is making political theater to threaten immigrants with detention in one of the most infamous facilities in the world, with serious consequences for people's fundamental rights and for the American rule of law,” he said.
Once again, the tenant of the White House violates international conventions, since according to the United Nations, the detention of migrants should only be applied in exceptional cases and under strict international human rights standards.
On the subject, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, through his spokesman Jeremy Laurence, has emphasized the importance of guaranteeing dignified and respectful treatment for those who are in an irregular immigration situation. “The detention of migrants should only be used as a last resort and in exceptional circumstances,” Laurence said. He also recalled that all people, regardless of their immigration status, should receive treatment based on international standards.
As the statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry that categorically rejects this decision by Trump points out, many of the people he is expelling or intends to expel are victims of Washington's own plundering policies. They are the ones who cover labor needs that have historically existed in agriculture, construction, industry, services and various sectors of the US economy.
Others -says the Foreign Ministry- entered the United States thanks to facilities at the borders, as a result of selective, politically motivated rules that welcome them as refugees and, also, of the socioeconomic damage caused by unilateral coercive measures.
Trumpist Xenophobia
In the ten years he has been in politics, Trump has repeatedly called undocumented migrants from Latin America invaders, criminals, murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, terrorists. In his campaign for the 2024 White House he repeated that “isolated and tragic cases show that migrants are killing Americans en masse,” and in an electoral debate he said that “Haitian immigrants kill pets of American people and eat them.”
In his speeches he has tried to stigmatize migrants as criminals with a hint of savagery and barbarism. “They have bad genes,” he said on one occasion, and then added that with the genetically inherited evil they have and with the one they learn in their countries, “they bring crime, drugs and pathogens to the United States.”
In his words and actions he reveals, again and again, the arbitrary, illegal and deeply xenophobic vocation of the new North American administration. How far will he be willing to go? What will be the parameter to measure “dangerousness” according to Trump?
The Republican began his term on January 20 with a series of broad decrees on migration, which included declaring a national emergency on the southern border of the United States, immediately ending the use of the CBP One application and starting a process to end birthright citizenship, which is expected to lead to a legal battle. He said he wanted Mexicans out of the United States and threatened to impose harsh tariffs as a pressure measure on his neighbor.
The relentless crusade against the migrant has been clear from the beginning. And to top it off, Guantánamo.
The former interim director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) and current “border czar,” Tom Homan, said that ICE would be the agency in charge of managing the migrant detention center in Guantanamo. Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, who was stationed at the base during his military service, has described the site as “ideal” for this purpose.
Amy Fischer, director of the Refugee and Migrant Rights Program at Amnesty International’s US division, criticized the use of Guantanamo to house migrants.
“Sending immigrants to Guantánamo is a deeply cruel and costly measure. It will isolate them from lawyers, family members, and support systems, and throw them into a black hole so the U.S. government can continue to violate their human rights out of sight. Close Guantanamo now and forever!” Fischer said in a statement.
Legal limbo for migrants
Detaining undocumented immigrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base is not an idea that is being considered for the first time in the White House.
In the 1990s, the base became a legal limbo for hundreds of Haitians fleeing their country after the 1991 coup d'état. These people intercepted at sea were confined in a Guantanamo detention center without guarantees of asylum and, in many cases, without access to adequate medical treatment, according to Amnesty International.
The NGO itself has pointed out that among these Haitian migrants, more than 270 were HIV-positive and were trapped in an improvised camp, without the right to enter the United States, and with minimal medical resources. At that time, the peak of the AIDS epidemic was being experienced, and a good number of them died before a decision was made on their applications. This event occurred during the Administration of George Bush (father).
In 1994, Bill Clinton ordered Haitian and Cuban refugees intercepted at sea to be held at the base, raising the immigrant population there to 45,000 people in a single year.
Since then, human rights organizations have documented the continued use of the military facility to hold asylum seekers in prison-like conditions and without access to the outside world. They point out that isolated and without guarantees of protection or shelter, many of them have remained in confinement for years, waiting for a third country to accept them.
Immigrant detention center
Inside the base, administered by the US Navy, there are still those famous cages where the first detainees of the war against terrorism arrived, hooded and handcuffed, with their orange uniforms, before being interned in the Camp Delta military prison. Dozens of reports have denounced the torture and mistreatment of these prisoners, with heartbreaking images. Amnesty International described it in 2005 as “an American gulag,” but the Bush Administration responded then that it was a necessity to intern the worst terrorists.
Now Trump echoes that same rhetoric, reaffirming that the Guantanamo Naval Base remains an indispensable instrument for the national security of the United States.
According to the American press, the migrants will not be held in the military prison, where an undetermined number of foreigners suspected of terrorism are still being held - including the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed - but in a separate area.
The Guantanamo Immigration Operations Center (GMOC) is on the opposite side of the bay. According to The New York Times, it has a capacity for about 120 people, although in recent years it has only housed a few dozen. Something that will change drastically, according to Trump's plans.
Witnesses speak out
Today, GMOC occupies a small area of ??the former barracks. Although there is little public information available about the facility, the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), a non-profit organization, cited by the BBC, said in a report that it had interviewed several people who passed through there.
“These refugees are detained indefinitely in prison-like conditions. They have no access to the outside world and are trapped in a punitive system operated by the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security and other private contractors, with little or no transparency or accountability,” the people point out the document.
Migrants who went to IRAP, other detained refugees and former GMOC employees, describe the building as “dilapidated, with mold and sewage problems,” according to the BBC.
“Detainees are denied confidential phone calls, even with their lawyers, and are punished if they dare share stories of mistreatment.”
Illegally occupied territory
In dialogue with Cubadebate, PhD in Sciences Maira E. Relova, specialist in United States issues at the Center for International Policy Research (CIPI), recalled that the Guantanamo Naval Base is located in Cuban territory that is illegally occupied by the United States. There are 117 square kilometers stolen in one of the best bays in Cuba.
Let us remember that the naval station was established in 1898, following the defeat of Spain in the war and the American military occupation of Cuba. With the signing of the Permanent Treaty of Relations on May 22, 1903, the way was opened for the agreement of other agreements derived from the clauses of the Platt Amendment, among them, the negotiation on possible bays for naval stations.
Cuba, due to its privileged geographical position, served as a supply and transit point for the American fleet. It was the era of the Big Stick, when Theodore Roosevelt's presidency exerted open intervention over the entire continent through the guns of its battleships.
In order to exert its influence over the Panama Canal, the United States also needed to control the intermediate transit point between that place and its own maritime borders. And that point was precisely the largest of the Antilles.
The United States aspired to be ceded in perpetuity the portions of Cuban territory necessary for the establishment of four naval stations in the bays of Guantánamo, Cienfuegos, Nipe and Bahía Honda. However, in the negotiations the Cuban side showed a position of resistance to the North American claims, achieving that instead of selling land, a lease was agreed upon.
Between February 16 and 23, 1903, the Cuban and American presidents signed in their respective capitals the Agreement to lease land in Cuba for coaling and naval stations. The agreement that regulated this lease was signed in Havana on July 2, 1903 by representatives of the presidents of Cuba and the United States, José García Montes and Herbert G. Squiers, respectively.
The United States obtained an indefinite lease of Guantánamo and this allowed it to consolidate its military presence in the Caribbean and secure a strategic support point for its operations in the region.
“According to the laws, it is assumed that when a contract is indefinite it must close after one hundred years, but this has not been the case,” stressed the CIPI researcher, commenting that “for the occupation of the base and for the lease, the United States Government has offered Cuba a payment that it has not received since 1959 because it is considered illegal. An exhibition in Paris in 2004 exhibited several of the checks for $4,085 that the United States annually sends to Cuba for that concept.”
Maira E. Relova explained to Cubadebate that the base “was used militarily in 1906, 1912 and 1917 against other nations.
“It was an example of economic deformation, corruption, vices and prostitution, especially the town of Caimanera, where merchants developed and where the people of that town served as a labor force to maintain bars and businesses; others dedicated themselves to fishing, salt mines and the search for sustenance in the midst of a panorama of total poverty. During the years of the Second World War it had a floating population of between 15,000 and 20,000 people. They profited from the scarce drinking water (…)
“The environmental damage is deep where the San Nicolás swamp, to the northwest, was filled and converted into a shooting range. This caused damage to the hydrology of the area, causing major flooding by obstructing the natural course of the Guantánamo River, as well as the salinization of an agricultural valley.
“The residues of toxic substances in the waters of the bay and the environmental effects accumulated by the explosions in the shooting ranges and mines have had a direct impact on the ecosystem, biodiversity, and the health of the inhabitants of Caimanera and Boquerón.
“The explosion of mines, projectiles and aviation bombs had as secondary effects the spread of fires and the shaking of the caves and caverns with their consequences on biodiversity and impacts on the social order in the psychology of the inhabitants of Caimanera and Boquerón.
“Fishing activity in the bay has also been limited and its structure reduces the entry of marine species, especially migratory ones. Tourism has been affected by the limited access to the bay and because the best beaches in the area are concentrated in the occupied territory," said the researcher.
Maira E. Relova emphasized that for Commander in Chief Fidel Castro the Guantanamo Naval Base was always a great concern, considering that the US presence in that facility could give them a pretext for aggression against our country and constitutes a permanent provocation.
“In 1960, during a reflection with workers in Caimanera, Fidel expressed: 'First of all, the government believes in the obligation to act on this whole problem related to the base with great care, everyone has already had the opportunity to listen to our pronouncements, in the sense of warning that continually...—even in the United Nations we raise it, I imagine that a part of you would be listening too—–, our concern that the base might be used as a pretext to create conflicts for the Revolutionary Government, and also, even a point that worried us, as a place where self-provocation could be encouraged. In the same way, he referred to the powerful economic interests that control the life of the nation in the United States and that minority characterized by being “unscrupulous people,” the researcher recalled.
“Fidel always pointed out that this issue had to be addressed with the greatest intelligence, as a legal problem, of law, morality, but not of force. He pointed out that at present the base has no military or strategic use, it is one more tool of force and arrogance against Cuba,” she added.
“The recent statements by President Donald Trump after the signed law that toughens criminal punishments for deported migrants, whom he criminalizes, and his decision to send them to the Guantanamo Naval Base, recalls the deliberate use of these facilities as a torture center and center of operations for migrants,” said the researcher.
She added that “in the last quarter of the 20th century, Cuban and Haitian immigrants intercepted on the high seas were held there. However, beginning in 2002, a small portion of the base was used to house prisoners suspected of links to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban army who were captured in Afghanistan, within the X-Ray, Delta and Echo camps, some of whom were even imprisoned without any charge.”
“In addition to continuing to be an offense to Cuba’s sovereignty, it is a violation of the human rights of people who are branded as criminals and who are human beings who deserve a minimum of respect, humanity and adherence to the law. It is said that they will send 30,000, but for how long? And the family? And how do they live? Total uncertainty.
“In the same way, contradictions emerge among those who supported Trump who are now asking for clemency for Cubans, who were approved for parole or given political asylum and who are still without residency and are not criminals, nor are the rest of the Latinos. In the end, these Trumpist representatives are drinking their own poison and attacking each other.
“Moreover, we will see how this human plunder is reversed internally for the United States,” she said.
According to the Cuban Foreign Ministry, the irresponsible use of the migrant detention center would generate a scenario of risk and insecurity in this illegal enclave and its surroundings. In addition, it would threaten peace, and would lend itself to errors, accidents and misinterpretations that could alter stability and cause serious consequences. (Text and Photo: Cubadebate)
