Trump Says He Wants To House 30,000 Migrant Criminals At Guantánamo Bay: ‘A Tough Place To Get Out Of’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed a presidential memorandum ordering the preparation of the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to house around 30,000 “criminal illegal aliens.” The facility is notorious for its secrecy and history of abuse, having been dubbed “America’s gulag” by human rights activists. Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield claimed it contained “the worst of the worst.”

The facility in Cuba has been used in the past two decades to detain prisoners accused of terrorism-related offenses. The United States Navy operates the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, while the Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) operates the detention camp. 

Trump, when announcing the memo, said that most people “don’t even know about it” but added that it would ensure the tens of thousands of detainees it would house detainees who pose a threat to the American public would not come back. 

“It’s a tough place to get out of,” Trump said. “Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust their countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back.”

Trump asked Congress to finance the rapid removal of illegal aliens and bolster U.S. border security efforts. 

As a significant step to the Trump administration’s swift crackdown on immigration, the move will bring the U.S. one step closer to totally “eradicating the scourge” of migrant crime, President Trump said.

Cuban officials were irate over the proposal. “In an act of brutality, the new U.S. government announces the imprisonment at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory [Cuba], of thousands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in a post on X.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed on Wednesday that the facility is already being used to house “the worst of the worst” illegal immigrants and that DHS will make sure the facility is updated with enough resources to house new criminal illegal aliens out of the U.S.

At the end of the Biden administration, just 15 detainees remained at the facility. In a 2024 report from the International Refugee Assistance Project, Yemeni refugees claimed that conditions at the facility were inhumane and unlawful.

“You can’t find another state, federal, or local facility with higher detention standards than ICE,” White House border czar Tom Homan said. 

Critics say that Guantanamo is not big enough to house 30,000 detainees.