Donald Trump signs Executive Orders in the Oval Office
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‘If this doesn’t horrify you…’: Trump’s migrant flights to Guantanamo Bay are causing uproar online

Trump’s mass deportation scheme has reached an abysmal new low.

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In service of his deportation agenda, Donald Trump has announced the he will be holding undocumented migrants at Guantanamo Bay, an American military black site that rose to infamy for its for its countless causes of human rights abuses in its decades of operation.

According to the Trump administration, the former torture facility is currently being prepped to hold upwards of 30,000 migrants. As of now, facility is only equipped to hold 200 people. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that a military plane holding 9 to 10 migrants departed from U.S. soil, and that its occupants will be the first of a new wave of undocumented prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. McLaughlin called the migrants “highly dangerous criminal aliens,” but didn’t elaborate further. The migrants will be housed separately from the detainees currently held at the base.

Trump administration officials have declined to give details on the migrants who will be sent to Guantanamo – including whether or not their number includes women and children. “If this doesn’t horrify you as a human being, you are disgusting” writes political commentator Ed Krassenstein in an X post responding to the Trump administration’s decision.

According to former Homeland Security official, the Trump administration is “pushing the limits” of the Immigration and Nationality Act (a mainstay piece of U.S. immigration law) in order to facilitate the deportations. Current immigration law is focused within the borders of the United States, but it’s not clear how those laws and legal protections for migrants will function outside of U.S. soil. Sources familiar with the Trump administration’s plan aren’t certain if immigrants will be entitled to due process or have access to social services.

The international backlash to the Trump administration’s decision was swift, with Cuban President Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel calling Trump’s plan to imprison migrants at Guantanamo an “act of brutality”.  Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said that Trump’s decision showed “contempt for the human condition and international law”.

The Trump administration’s decision to use Guantanamo Bay to detain migrants further fulfills its promise to use the military in service of its mass deportation plan. During his first day in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the United States southern border, which allowed him to deploy thousands of National Guard troops to assist in deportation procedure. The Trump administration has since employed military flights to assist in deportations, and military planes have delivered undocumented migrants to Guatemala, India, Peru and Honduras. This current deportation effort is proving to be enormously expensive, and costs around $5000 per migrant. Nevertheless, the Pentagon has announced that it intends to deport 5,000 migrants currently being held in Texas and California.

According to Trump’s Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Guantanamo Bay is the “perfect place to provide for migrants who are traveling out of our country” along with “hardened criminals.” Users on the internet have expressed fear that immigrants will be subject to human rights abuses, and have drawn comparisons between the present day United States and Nazi Germany.

Others made the prediction that someday Trump and his allies would be put on trial for violating human rights – Trump’s decision detain migrants at Guantanamo being only the tip of the iceberg of his crimes in service of deportation.

Others point out the chillingly upbeat tone that Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt employs to describe the deportations – as if America was sending off machines and not people.

Trump spent his entire campaign degrading migrants—in preparation for his administration’s most dehumanizing policy yet.


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Sarah Fimm
Sarah Fimm (they/them) is actually nine choirs of biblically accurate angels crammed into one pair of $10 overalls. They have been writing articles for nerds on the internet for less than a year now. They really like anime. Like... REALLY like it. Like you know those annoying little kids that will only eat hotdogs and chicken fingers? They're like that... but with anime. It's starting to get sad.