US President Donald Trump, in a new memorandum, ordered the US Naval base at Guantanamo Bay to prepare for 30,000 ‘worst criminal’ migrants who are threatening America.
According to Reuters, Trump on Wednesday, January 29, 2025, signed a memorandum directing the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”
The 78-year-old said at the White House, “Today I'm also signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay.”
He added that the facility would be used to "detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And, tough."
Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argued that the base could be reserved to detain “the worst of the worst.”
Noem told CNN, “There might be some resources that could be established for the worst of the worst at Guantanamo Bay, and that’s something that he is evaluating along with our team at the Department of Homeland Security.”
Notably, the US Naval base in Guantanamo Bay already has a housing facility for the migrants that has been used occasionally in decades to hold migrants from Haiti and Cuba who were caught at sea.
Furthermore, the president's comments came after he signed the first major legislation after taking office for the second time, the Laken Riley Act. The act requires the detention of undocumented migrants who are charged with serious crimes.
