An Ever-Expanding Gulag of Concentration Camps for Immigrants: The US Under Stephen Miller
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When Donald Trump promised, on the campaign trail, to “carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”, even the most observant critics would have been hard-pressed to realize quite what that would actually entail.
In the last year, however, we’ve come to see what it is, and the reality is truly horrific, as it involves nothing less than a concerted effort to turn the entire landmass of the United States into a hunting ground for masked and heavily-armed unaccountable thugs to terrorize entire cities, to abduct anyone who isn’t white, on the merest suspicion that they might be undocumented migrants, and to “disappear” them into increasingly overcrowded detention facilities where even the most basic human requirements — decent food and water, and adequate medical treatment — are routinely denied, where strenuous efforts are made to deny them access to lawyers, despite that being their legal right, and where institutionalized cruelty and violence are rampant.
When Trump’s second presidency began, ICE was holding around 40,000 people in 107 facilities. In just twelve months, those figures have both nearly doubled, with over 70,000 people held in 212 facilities. Most pertinently, despite the administration’s claims that it is only seizing and removing “criminal illegal aliens”, three-quarters of those held — 52,504 out of the 70,766 held as of January 25 — have no criminal record whatsoever, while many of those with convictions “committed only minor offenses, including traffic violations.”
Photos and Report: Marking Three Years of the Monthly Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on Feb. 4, 2026
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On Wednesday February 4, campaigners at nine locations across the US and around the world resumed the monthly “First Wednesday” global vigils calling for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which I first initiated three years ago, and which have been running continuously ever since.
Last month, as happens every January, the vigils moved to January 11, to mark the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison, when an unprecedented 19 vigils took place, 12 in the US and seven at other locations worldwide, as can be seen here.
Photos from the vigils in Washington, D.C., London, New York, Brussels, Portland, OR, San Francisco, Detroit and Cobleskill, NY are posted below, and please read on for my reflections on Guantánamo in 2026. Mexico City had to cancel their vigil at the last minute, but will be back next month — on Wednesday March 4 — while, in Los Angeles, Jon Krampner held a solo vigil, because his regular companions were unable to attend, but no one helped him commit the vigil to posterity by taking a photo. As he said, “I went to the Downtown Los Angeles Federal Building. Early on, two young Latinas briefly video’d me, making a few supportive remarks as they did so. Later on, a young guy walked past me, saying that the entire base should be given back to Cuba. Some people looked at me, many didn’t even appear to notice.”
Fascism in the US, as the Trump Administration Defends Death Squad Executions of US Citizens
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In the space of 17 days, US immigration enforcement agents — members of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and the Border Patrol — executed two US citizens, in broad daylight, on the streets of Minneapolis, who posed no threat to them.
We know that Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year old mother, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year old ICU nurse with the US Department of Veterans Affairs, were executed, and posed no threat to the agents, because of multiple videos recorded on smartphones at both locations.
Renee Nicole Good, who had just driven her six-year old son to school, was smiling at, and speaking to Jonathan Ross, the agent who executed her, as she began maneuvering her car past him, less than 30 seconds before he shot her, once through her windshield, and twice through the side window, and then called her a “f*cking bitch.”
Alex Pretti, who was monitoring immigration enforcement agents’ actions, as was his right, was filming on his phone, and trying to protect a woman from assault, when he was pepper-sprayed and set upon by officials who, after finding that he was legally carrying a concealed weapon, removed it from him and then, as he was kneeling on the ground, executed him with gunshots to the back of his head. In the space of 30 seconds, he was shot ten times.
Photos and Report: 19 Global Vigils for the Closure of Guantánamo on the 24th Anniversary of the Prison’s Opening
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Between Saturday January 10 and Monday January 12, an impressive 18 vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay took place across the US and around the world, marking the 24th anniversary of the opening of the prison, with a 19th taking place on January 15.
Eleven of these vigils were by campaigners who have been taking part in the monthly coordinated “First Wednesday” global vigils that I initiated three years ago, and that have been taking place every month ever since.
Seven of these are at locations in the US — outside the White House in Washington, D.C., in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Detroit, Cobleskill, NY, and Portland, OR — while the other four are in London, Brussels and Mexico City, with former Guantánamo prisoner Mansoor Adayfi holding a solo vigil in Belgrade.
Eight more groups also joined us. Five of these were in the US — in Augusta, ME, Cleveland, OH, Greenfield, MA and Raleigh, NC, where annual vigils take place on a regular basis, and in Honolulu in Hawaii, while three others, initiated by Mansoor, took place in Rome, Italy, in Warsaw, Poland and at Shannon Airport in Ireland.
Judge Condemns the Trump Administration’s Illegal and “Impermissibly Punitive” Use of Guantánamo to Hold Migrants
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I wrote the following article for the “Close Guantánamo” website, which I established in January 2012, on the 10th anniversary of the opening of Guantánamo, with the US attorney Tom Wilner. Please join us — just an email address is required to be counted amongst those opposed to the ongoing existence of Guantánamo, and to receive updates of our activities by email.
The wheels of justice may grind slowly in the US court system, for reasons that involve various forms of inefficiency, but also the requirement to conduct detailed research into legal precedents. Nevertheless, throughout the Republic’s 249-year history, the courts have repeatedly, if, at times, in a glacial manner, performed a key role in ensuring that the checks and balances in the Constitution — the separation of powers between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of the government — are enforced.
On December 5, ten months after a particularly noxious example of executive overreach began — the detention of migrants with final deportation orders from the US in detention facilities on the grounds of the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay — Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan, a judge in the District Court in Washington, D.C., ruled definitively that the Trump administration’s policy of holding migrants at Guantánamo was both “impermissibly punitive”, as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, and was also completely unauthorized under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
The ruling came in a class action lawsuit, Luna Gutierrez v. Noem, that had first been submitted in June by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union (the ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) on behalf of two Nicaraguan nationals who were held at Guantánamo at the time, but also on behalf of every other migrant in “a similarly situated class”; namely, “all immigration detainees originally apprehended and detained in the United States, and who are, or will be held at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.”
Photos and Report: August’s Monthly Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure Mark What Is Now A Doubly Forgotten Prison
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Last Wednesday (August 6), our small but dedicated global family of campaigners came together for the 31st successive month at our “First Wednesday” monthly global vigils for the closure of the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay.
Nine vigils took place — five in the US, in Washington, D.C., New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Detroit, with others in London, Brussels, Mexico City and Belgrade, where the former prisoner Mansoor Adayfi held a solo vigil. Campaigners in Cobleskill, NY joined us on the Saturday (August 9).
My thanks as always to the dedication of everyone involved, from organizations including numerous Amnesty International groups, Close Guantánamo, the UK Guantánamo Network, Witness Against Torture, the World Can’t Wait, the Peacemakers of Schoharie County, and various activist groups in New York City, with support from numerous other organizations.
Profound Alarm at Trump’s Deportation of Migrants to Third Countries Without Protections Against Torture or Even Death
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On the campaign trail on October 27, 2024, just days before November’s Presidential Election, Donald Trump promised, “On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get the criminals out.”
Trump’s target, to follow the logic of his promise, were those amongst the eleven million undocumented migrants in the US, according to estimates published by the Office of Homeland Security Statistics in April 2024, who had been convicted of crimes, which was a fraction of the total (just 4%).
According to Patrick J. Lechleitner, the acting director of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), in a letter to Congress on September 25, 2024, the total number of noncitizens with criminal convictions was, at the time, 435,719, although it’s important to note that a breakdown of the crimes committed demonstrated a wide spectrum from the most minor of offences through to much more significant crimes.
As Trump Holds 72 Migrants at Guantánamo From 26 Countries Including the UK, What Is His Long-Term Plan?
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In a shocking development reported two days ago by CBS News, the Department of Homeland Security has revealed that it is currently holding 72 migrants at Guantánamo from 26 countries.
At least one of these migrants is a UK national, while the other countries whose nationals are held are Brazil, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, St. Kitts-Nevis, Venezuela and Vietnam.
A month ago, shockwaves reverberated around the world when, as I discussed here, Politico reported that the Trump administration was planning to send at least 9,000 migrants to Guantánamo from a variety of countries, including 800 from Europe.
Photos and Report: Global Vigils for Guantánamo’s Closure on July 2, 2025 and the Growing Threat of the Gitmoization of the US
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On Wednesday July 2, the latest “First Wednesday” global vigils for the closure of the prison at Guantánamo Bay took place — four in the US, three in Europe, and one in Mexico City. An additional US vigil took place on Saturday July 5.
Please see the photos below, and read on for my analysis of the importance of the vigils, not only for the men still held, but also to highlight how, since Donald Trump came back to the White House, it has become increasingly apparent that the core injustice of Guantánamo — holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, and without providing any evidence for doing so — is being shamefully and cynically repurposed to justify detentions in the “war on migrants” that he declared when he took office in January.
Did a Leak Stop Trump From Sending 9,000 Migrants to Guantánamo, Including 800 Europeans?
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Yesterday, marking UN Torture Day, I posted my latest article on Close Guantánamo, which I’m cross-posting here, with reflections on torture past and present at the prison, Donald Trump’s shameful and lawless decision to co-opt Guantánamo for his deeply racist “war on migrants” — and the latest news involving Haitian migrants. I also publicized a recent letter to Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth calling for the closure of Guantánamo by Rep. Rashida Tlaib and 14 of her Congressional colleagues, which was, in particular, prompted by alarming reports two weeks ago that the Trump administration was intending to send 9,000 new migrants to Guantanamo, including 800 Europeans. The story was decried as “fake news” by the White House, but I suggested that it was in fact a plan, and that it was leaked by officials within the administration to get it dropped, which seems to have quietly happened after numerous foreign governments expressed outrage about the proposals.
Yesterday, June 26, was the UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, first marked in 1998 to commemorate the historic day in 1987 when the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment came into effect, and also to mark the historic day in 1945 when the United Nations Charter, the founding document of the UN, was signed in San Francisco by 50 countries.
Despite the best intentions of those who worked assiduously to create the Torture Convention over many decades, many of its signatories have — either openly or covertly — failed to fulfill their obligations to prevent the use of torture.
Particularly prominent amongst the violators of the Torture Convention is the United States, which, following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, outsourced torture to a number of notorious right-abusing regimes in the Middle East, and also implemented a covert global torture program via a number of CIA “black site” torture prisons scattered around the world. I covered much of this story as the lead writer of a UN report about secret detention in 2010, and the CIA’s role was scrutinized and condemned in a torture report undertaken by the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose 500-page unclassified summary was published in December 2014.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
