Guantanamo Bay prepares for Trump’s migrant surge
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Signs outside the fence of Camp 6 detention facility at the US Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on April 8, 2014.
PHOTO: AFP
Carol Rosenberg and Eric Schmitt
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GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba – About 300 service members have landed at Guantanamo Bay to provide security and begin setting up at a new tent city for migrants, as officials comply with US President Donald Trump’s order to prepare the navy base for as many as 30,000 deportees.
The small base in south-east Cuba is on the verge of undergoing its most drastic change since the Pentagon opened its wartime prison there after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
The operation will require a surge of staff and goods to the isolated base, which is behind a Cuban minefield and is entirely dependent on air and sea supply missions from the US.
Everything, from pallets of bottled water and frozen food for the commissary to school supplies and government vehicles, comes twice a month on a barge. Fresh fruits and vegetables for the 4,200 residents come on a weekly refrigerator flight.
Fulfilling the President’s order could grow the population there tenfold because of the staff it would take to operate the encampment, which is on a unpopulated corner of the base far from the prison, as well as the commissary, school and suburban-style neighbourhoods for service members and their families.
The small base in south-east Cuba is on the verge of undergoing its most drastic change since the Pentagon opened its wartime prison there after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.
PHOTO: AFP
In response to Trump’s order, US forces have already put up 50 Army green tents inside a chain-link-fence enclosure, adjacent to a barracks-style building called the Migrant Operations Centre.
The first wave of about 50 Marines arrived on the night of Feb 1. The next 50 arrived on Feb 2.
The military declined to comment on its current capacity to receive the migrants or on what other provisions were inbound. The Southern Command, which has oversight of the troops assigned to the prison and the migration plan, would not discuss the operation.
The military declined to comment on its current capacity to receive the migrants or on what other provisions were inbound.
PHOTO: DOUG MILLS/NYTIMES
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that dangerous deportees might be put in detention facilities that currently hold 15 prisoners from the war on terrorism, among them five men who are accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks.
But no decision has been made on whether some migrants would be housed at the wartime prison, a Defence Department official said on Feb 1.
In remarks last week, Mr Hegseth also mentioned that about 6,000 deportees could be housed “on the golf course”, which is near the base’s McDonald’s, Irish pub and family housing. NYTIMES
