Trump Administration Plans To Deport 9,000 Migrants To Guantanamo – Where Habeas Corpus Doesn’t Apply

The Trump Administration has a new plan to change the process of detaining and deporting migrants. Starting this week, the administration is going to begin transferring migrants to Guantanamo Bay, a detention camp that’s known for holding terrorism suspects.

Guantanamo Bay is also a facility in which habeas corpus doesn’t apply due to its being located outside of U.S. territory.

Currently, at least 9,000 people are planned to be transferred to the facility. Out of these potential transfers, there are at least 800 Europeans hailing from Austria, Romania, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Ukraine. Some U.S. diplomats have warned that many of these European countries are allies of the U.S. and that this might alarm these detainees’ countries of origin.

Currently, there have been around 500 migrants held at Guantanamo, and President Donald Trump announced in January that the facility could hold up to 30,000 migrants.

These transfers are part of a plan for the migrants to be temporarily held at Guantanamo before being deported to their countries of origin. These planned transfers are to create more space at domestic American facilities to hold detained migrants. Immigration advocates suspect that the administration is trying to instill fear among migrants of being transferred to Guantanamo if detained.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not have to inform the countries of detainees’ origins that they’re being transferred.

Since Trump’s re-election, the president and his administration have been accelerating plans to increase deportations and arrests. Senior policy adviser Stephen Miller has declared a goal of arresting 3,000 migrants per day.

A lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C., declared the government has “no legitimate purpose that is served by holding immigrant detainees at Guantanamo, rather than at detention facilities inside the United States.” The attorneys also argued that the government is using Guantanamo as a fear tactic for immigrants.