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Since Donald Trump issued an executive order on January 29, to expand an existing migrant detention facility on the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay — the Migrant Operations Center — to hold 30,000 migrants, as part of the “war on migrants” that he cynically and malevolently embarked upon as soon as he took office, eight flights of migrants from immigrant detention facilities in the US — all, apparently, carrying Venezuelans — arrived at Guantánamo between February 5 and 12, containing 98 men in total.

This is alarming enough, because no information has been provided about the legality of these flights, to a naval base that has only previously been used for prisoners seized in the “war on terror”, in what is known as the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility, which opened in 2002, and, via its Migrant Operations Center, first used in the 1990s, for migrants intercepted at sea. The base has never before been used to hold foreign nationals brought from the US mainland, who should have the same rights of access to lawyers and contact with families that they would have had on the US mainland. There is no indication, however, that this is the case.

The administration has also provided no information about who these people are, beyond unverifiable claims about them being gang members, and why it is regarded as so important for them to be sent to Guantánamo when, it would seem, they could just as easily be returned to their home countries. Just as importantly, no information has been provided about why this operation has begun without Congressional approval, or Congressional funding.

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Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

In shocking news reported by the New York Times, it has emerged that ten Venezuelan migrants “with suspected gang affiliations” — not confirmed, just “suspected” — who were flown to Guantánamo on Wednesday (February 5) have been moved into one of two prison blocks that, until their arrival, had been used to house prisoners seized in the “war on terror”, as part of the larger Military Detention Center — the notorious Guantánamo prison — that opened in January 2002.

The Pentagon claimed that the ten men, described as “high-threat illegal aliens”, were “too dangerous for the migrant site” at the opposite end of the naval base from the “war on terror” prison, which had previously been described as the destination for the migrants, where an existing 120-bed Migrant Operations Center has existed since the early 1990s.

The Pentagon stated that the ten men “are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities”, and claimed that “US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is taking this measure to ensure the safe and secure detention of these individuals until they can be transported to their country of origin or other appropriate destination.”

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Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal. Please also consider taking out a free or paid subscription to my new Substack newsletter.

This article is a much-expanded version of “Monthly Close Guantánamo Vigils Resume Amidst Trump’s Chilling Promise to Expand a Neighboring Facility to Hold 30,000 Migrants“, an article published on February 3 on 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.

On January 20, as Donald Trump took office for the second time, it seemed that the “war on terror” prison at Guantánamo Bay, which had recently marked the 23rd anniversary of its opening, might become as marginalized and generally forgotten as it was in his first term in office, when he largely sealed it shut for four years.

Last Wednesday, however, and seemingly out of the blue, Trump suddenly announced that he had just issued a new executive order, “Expanding Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay to Full Capacity”, to expand an existing migrant detention facility at the naval base, where the “war on terror” prison is located, “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”, as part of his intention to “halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty.”

Announcing his executive order, Trump claimed that the expanded migrant detention facility was intended to house 30,000 migrants, stating, “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” It was, however, unclear on what basis these migrants would be held, just as Trump also failed to acknowledge that Congressional approval would be required for its construction.

Check out here my half-hour interview about Trump’s plans, with Chris Cook, for his weekly Gorilla Radio show, which, for 25 years, has been “providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.”

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