The Source of Source for Donald Trump’s Gitmo -Hiking Retention Plan.

On By Littum

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At a press conference on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that his administration will build a 30,000 beds in Guantanamo Bay. His office also issued a Memorandum Without many details that advertise the plan. At this point, it is still impossible to see if the plan will be realized or will be like his border wall: a less than half -built eyes without influence on migration. Like the border wall, it is nothing new to build a detention center for migrants in Guantanamo Bay.

In the 1980s, a large number of unauthorized immigrants from the Caribbean and Central American countries began to arrive in the United States. Pushed out of civil war, economic fate and political oppression, thousands of refugees from Cuba, Haiti and El Salvador began arriving in America. Most relevant in the present moment, the arrival of more than 100,000 Cubans and about 15,000 Haitians Early in a year, the coastal border authorities overwhelmed and led to widespread indignation in the country.

Back then, as today, in turning toward this growing influx of wandering arrivals, public officials And many in the media began referring to migration at the southern border and the coast as an invasion and called migrants criminals. Both Haitian and Cuban migrants were quickly associated with crime In the public consciousness, with the former group – resembles today’s migrants – as the biggest stigma.

The government responded by adopting laws that criminalized migrants more heavily, by increasing the use of detention and by fortifying and monitoring the border as it did many communities inland as part of its war against drugs. It is a process that has continued today.

Along the way, the Clinton administration built a lot of detention facility for 12,500 inmates in Guantanamo Bay. (Currently only about 4 percent of prisons in the United States Keep more than 1,000 inmates.) The detention center operated for three years and was eventually closed under great political pressure, not without sometimes infected with Maggots.

Officially, the Guantanamo detention center was a response to a problem of immigration enforcement, not security concerns. Like Ellis and Angel Islands before that, the government’s idea was that by creating a “treatment plant” offshore it could properly analyze the legal case for each individual before giving them legal entry. This time there is no pretext.

Trump has consistently destroyed migrants and is equated with criminals. His entire political increase is bound to the idea that immigrants invade the country and that only he can solve it. As Trump himself said in his statements to the press, the facility in Guantanamo is to “withhold the worst criminal illegal aliens who threaten the American people.”

The threat is apparently so severe that he plans to build a detention facility of unprecedented size in the US context. For example, Tule Lake Japanese International Camp had a capacity of about 18,000. If the Trump administration actually builds the withholding camp in Guantanamo, it will double in size Auschwitz-Birkena’s original design and be larger than Dachau and Treblinka combined.

So no, the message is not just about administering the immigration system like Clinton tried and not exclusively about capturing immigrants. After all, the government today holds about 40,000 immigrants a day and can withhold more in the scattered and unused carcerous infrastructure in the country. All that is going to happen is that Congress fits the funds for this purpose, something it tried to do during the Biden administration before Trump sabotaged efforts through his congressing allies.

What is critical is this: Guantanamo today carries a particular political valence. For some, it is a symbol of abuse of governments, but for others it is the place where terrorists are kept. Trump intends to incorporate Guantanamo intentionally restore the same message that emerged him to power: Immigrants are criminals and they are here to hurt you. But now Trump is moving on: Some of these immigrants are not just criminals, they are similar to terrorists. Scary, this step can also be Trump, signaling an intention to strip undocumented immigrants of even more rights and treat them under similar violent conditions that the recent Guantanamo Bay prisoners have experienced.

Of course, the facts have never meant when it has come to Trump’s fear policy. It has nothing Most immigrants do not commit crimesNeither did The majority of immigrants in custody did not commit crimesNot even that this week arrested Trump -Administration a majority of people who are not threats of public security. It has been irrelevant to him that immigration’s detention is simply not necessary to manage the immigration system. Such withholding policies are only one animal And the punishing public employment program that does not ensure that people with valid legal demands are better regulated than the government would without detention policies. And today, when Trump claims he needs more beds for imprisoned, it is useless to point out that undocumented items had dropped to one of the lowest levels in recent years by the end of 2024.

Trump’s movement is in line with what Nativists around the world have done, whether Australia is building a (now closed) retention center in Papua New Guinea, or England sends asylum seekers to Rwanda. Long away are the days of solidarity with those who avoid fate and oppression. The world has not only turned their backs on those seeking refuge outside their home boundaries, it has criminalized them. I am afraid of things being about to get worse.