Rights groups condemn Trump Guantánamo Bay order as ‘disastrous’ and ‘indefensible’
Rights groups were swift to condemn Donald Trump’s announcement that he would order the construction of a migrant detention facility in Guantánamo Bay.
Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”.
It argued that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.
The American Civil Liberties Union said building a huge detention facility at Guantánamo would be a “disastrous mistake”.
Sending scores of immigrants to an inaccessible military base in Cuba could enable the government to deprive them of basic human rights, far from lawyers, the press, and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, that appears to be the point.
The International Refugee Assistance Project said Wednesday’s announcement marked “yet another grave and indefensible act by the Trump administration”.
In a statement it said that Guantánamo is “notorious for torture and other egregious, illegal US government action” and that “even during the Biden administration, when only dozens of people were held there typically, rights violations were rampant.”
If that’s what conditions at Guantánamo were like under Biden, what will it be like when Trump requires the military to detain tens of thousands?
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Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”.
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It argued that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.
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The American Civil Liberties Union said building a huge detention facility at Guantánamo would be a “disastrous mistake”.
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Sending scores of immigrants to an inaccessible military base in Cuba could enable the government to deprive them of basic human rights, far from lawyers, the press, and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, that appears to be the point.
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The International Refugee Assistance Project said Wednesday’s announcement marked “yet another grave and indefensible act by the Trump administration”.
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In a statement it said that Guantánamo is “notorious for torture and other egregious, illegal US government action” and that “even during the Biden administration, when only dozens of people were held there typically, rights violations were rampant.”
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If that’s what conditions at Guantánamo were like under Biden, what will it be like when Trump requires the military to detain tens of thousands?
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Kennedy Jr., nominee to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies in front of the Senate Finance Committee in Washington, DC on January 29, 2025.”,”caption”:”Robert F Kennedy Jr. testified in front of the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
Some of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks are set to appear before Senate committees as part of their confirmation process today.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the health committee from 10am EST (3pm GMT).
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Kennedy appeared before the finance committee on Wednesday and, during a three-and-a-half-hour hearing, was grilled over past comments about the efficacy of vaccines as well as his grasp of the workings of the US healthcare system.
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Also appearing at 10am ET, this time before the intelligence committee, will be Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
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A Democratic congresswoman until 2021, Gabbard gradually moved away from her old party and last year endorsed Trump, joining him on the campaign trail at several rallies.
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Gabbard has faced opposition for comments on topics including Edward Snowden, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Syrian civil war.
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In January 2017, she revealed she had travelled to Syria to meet its now-deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A few months later, she said she was “skeptical” about whether the regime had been behind chemical weapons attacks that targeted civilians during the war.
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distant view of part of the Guantánamo Bay base in southeastern Cuba.”,”caption”:”The Guantánamo Bay naval base is situated on a strip of land on the south-eastern coast of Cuba leased by the US in 1903.”,”credit”:”Photograph: Miami Herald/TNS”}},{“_type”:”model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.TextBlockElement”,”html”:”
As part of his plans to reduce illegal immigration to the US, Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a new detention facility capable of holding 30,000 people at Guantánamo Bay.
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He said the centre would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
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“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
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Guantánamo Bay is best-known as the site of a US naval base on a coastal strip of land in southeastern Cuba that was leased by the US under a treaty in 1903.
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A military prison set up on the base in the wake of the September 11 attacks has since been used to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
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Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both tried to close the prison but were stopped by Congress.
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An existing facility, separate from the prison, is already used by the US to detain migrants intercepted at sea, although it does not appear in public government records and details have only recently surfaced.
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As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.
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Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest news from US politics.
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First up, the Cuban president has described Donald Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as an “act of brutality”.
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Writing on X, Miguel Díaz-Canel said the move would place people deported from the US “next to well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention”.
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On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order instructing officials to prepare a facility capable of holding 30,000 people at the naval base, which over the past two decades has been used primarily to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
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Trump said the new facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
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Stay with us for more on that announcement and all the day’s developments.
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Key events
Here’s some more reaction to Donald Trump’s executive order instructing the military to prepare to house 30,000 immigrants at the US naval base in Cuba.
“Guantánamo is a stain on our nation’s honor,” Jerry Nadler, the Democratic congressman from New York, said.
For years, I have advocated for its closure, condemning the abuses and glaring lack of accountability that persist there. This massive expansion into a mass detention camp is morally indefensible & raises significant civil liberties concerns.
This is horrific,” Rashida Tlaib, the Democratic congresswoman from Michigan, said.
We cannot allow this level of dehumanization to become normalized. We need to shut down Guantánamo once and for all.
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.
Known primarily for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, Trump ordered the preparation of a “migrant facility” that he said would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
Here’s our explainer on the detention facility in the US-run military enclave.
Rights groups condemn Trump Guantánamo Bay order as ‘disastrous’ and ‘indefensible’
Rights groups were swift to condemn Donald Trump’s announcement that he would order the construction of a migrant detention facility in Guantánamo Bay.
Amnesty International said Guantánamo has been a “site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices”.
It argued that Trump should be using his authority to close the prison and not repurposing it for offshore immigration detention.
The American Civil Liberties Union said building a huge detention facility at Guantánamo would be a “disastrous mistake”.
Sending scores of immigrants to an inaccessible military base in Cuba could enable the government to deprive them of basic human rights, far from lawyers, the press, and Congressional oversight. Unfortunately, that appears to be the point.
The International Refugee Assistance Project said Wednesday’s announcement marked “yet another grave and indefensible act by the Trump administration”.
In a statement it said that Guantánamo is “notorious for torture and other egregious, illegal US government action” and that “even during the Biden administration, when only dozens of people were held there typically, rights violations were rampant.”
If that’s what conditions at Guantánamo were like under Biden, what will it be like when Trump requires the military to detain tens of thousands?
As part of his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, Donald Trump has announced that the US will hold migrants at the notorious Guantánamo military detention facility in Cuba.
The US naval base outpost in Guantánamo Bay already has a facility used to house migrants picked up at sea, which is separate from the high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects established in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks by Al-Qaida on the US.
A relatively small number of migrants have been detained at the facility – the New York Times reported that just 37 migrants were held there from 2020 to 2023 – but that could increase dramatically following Trump’s announcement.
On Wednesday, Trump said the facility would hold up to 30,000 immigrants. “We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately,” he said.
But a US official told CNN that the facilities at Guantanamo Bay are far from prepared to house up to 30,000 migrants. “There’s no way there’s 30,000 beds any more,” the US official said, adding that in order to care for that number of people, the US would have to bring “a lot of military staff” in.
Facebook owner Meta has agreed to pay $25m to settle a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump over the platform’s decision to suspend his accounts in the wake of the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
The majority of the settlement – $22m – will go toward a fund to pay for Trump’s presidential library, according to the Wall Street Journal. The rest will pay for legal fees and go to other plaintiffs listed in the case.
Following the January 6 attack, Facebook gave Trump the maximum penalty under its rules, suspending his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely.
At the time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg justified the decision by saying: “We believe the risks of allowing the president to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.”
Trump responded: “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing, and ultimately, we will win. Our Country can’t take this abuse anymore!”
Read the full story here:
Trump’s abrupt decision to pause all US foreign aid programmes could exacerbate violence in Latin America, driving more migration from a region already struggling with the rise of organised crime, experts have warned.
The US disbursed $1.5bn (£1.2bn) in humanitarian, military, environmental, and economic aid to South American countries in the 2023 financial year, but Trump has suspended almost all US foreign aid for at least 90 days to review whether it is “aligned” with the interests of his administration.
Already, at least three humanitarian organisations have suspended support operations for more than 41,000 people displaced by a recent outbreak of guerrilla violence in Colombia.
Another programme aimed at finding jobs to integrate hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants into Colombian society was also paralysed. In Brazil, two organisations working to assist Venezuelans fleeing Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship shut down their operations and a programme aimed at tackling the commercial sexual exploitation of children was ordered to stop.
“Organized gang violence has been a tragic burden for the region, as well as non-state armed groups,” said Marcia Wong, former deputy assistant administrator at the US Agency for International Development (USAid) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.
“Without assistance, vacuums can develop – allowing exploitation and violence.”
Read the full story here:
RFK and Gabbard to face confirmation hearings
Some of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks are set to appear before Senate committees as part of their confirmation process today.
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, will face the health committee from 10am EST (3pm GMT).
Kennedy appeared before the finance committee on Wednesday and, during a three-and-a-half-hour hearing, was grilled over past comments about the efficacy of vaccines as well as his grasp of the workings of the US healthcare system.
Also appearing at 10am ET, this time before the intelligence committee, will be Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence.
A Democratic congresswoman until 2021, Gabbard gradually moved away from her old party and last year endorsed Trump, joining him on the campaign trail at several rallies.
Gabbard has faced opposition for comments on topics including Edward Snowden, the Russia-Ukraine War, and the Syrian civil war.
In January 2017, she revealed she had travelled to Syria to meet its now-deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, whose regime had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. A few months later, she said she was “skeptical” about whether the regime had been behind chemical weapons attacks that targeted civilians during the war.
Here’s the full text of that post from the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, condemning Donald Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.
“In an act of brutality, the new US government announces that it will imprison thousands of migrants at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied #Cuba territory, and forcibly expel them, placing them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he wrote on X.
The country’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, said the base was in “illegally occupied #Cuba territory outside the jurisdiction of US courts” and showed “contempt for the human condition and international law”.
En acto de brutalidad, nuevo gobierno de EEUU anuncia encarcelamiento en Base Naval en Guantánamo, ubicada en territorio de #Cuba ilegalmente ocupado, de miles de migrantes que expulsa forzosamente, a los que ubicará junto a las conocidas cárceles de tortura y detención ilegal.
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 29, 2025
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En acto de brutalidad, nuevo gobierno de EEUU anuncia encarcelamiento en Base Naval en Guantánamo, ubicada en territorio de #Cuba ilegalmente ocupado, de miles de migrantes que expulsa forzosamente, a los que ubicará junto a las conocidas cárceles de tortura y detención ilegal.
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) January 29, 2025
What has Trump announced about Guantánamo Bay?
As part of his plans to reduce illegal immigration to the US, Donald Trump has ordered the creation of a new detention facility capable of holding 30,000 people at Guantánamo Bay.
He said the centre would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
“Some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust the countries [of origin] to hold them because we don’t want them coming back,” he said. “So we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
Guantánamo Bay is best-known as the site of a US naval base on a coastal strip of land in southeastern Cuba that was leased by the US under a treaty in 1903.
A military prison set up on the base in the wake of the September 11 attacks has since been used to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both tried to close the prison but were stopped by Congress.
An existing facility, separate from the prison, is already used by the US to detain migrants intercepted at sea, although it does not appear in public government records and details have only recently surfaced.
As of February 2024, four people were being held at the facility, the New York Times reported, citing the department of homeland security.
Trump plan to open migrant detention centre at Guantánamo Bay an ‘act of brutality’, Cuban president says
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest news from US politics.
First up, the Cuban president has described Donald Trump’s announcement of plans for a migrant detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as an “act of brutality”.
Writing on X, Miguel Díaz-Canel said the move would place people deported from the US “next to well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention”.
On Wednesday, Trump signed an executive order instructing officials to prepare a facility capable of holding 30,000 people at the naval base, which over the past two decades has been used primarily to hold suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, with few ever charged or convicted.
Trump said the new facility would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.
Stay with us for more on that announcement and all the day’s developments.
