President Donald Trump is preparing a migrant processing facility in US-occupied Cuba to house as many as 30,000 migrants illegally living in the US. 

On the campaign trail, Trump made immigration a central issue, pledging to expel people from the US, with an emphasis on convicted criminals. On Wednesday, the President signed an executive order to make it possible to send some of those people to a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 

“I hereby direct the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States,” the order says. 

The migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay is separate from the CIA torture prison that was established during the George W. Bush presidency. However, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem made statements that draw parallels between the facilities. 

“There might be some resources that could be established for the worst of the worst at Guantanamo Bay, and that’s something that he is evaluating along with our team at the Department of Homeland Security,” she told CNN. 

During the Bush administration, Americans were regularly told not to worry about the unconstitutional torture taking place at the GITMO prison as the detainees were the “worst of the worst.” However, the claim was debunked as an overwhelming number of the detainees at GITMO were innocent. 

Trump defended his executive order, saying, “Most people don’t even know about it. We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. This will double our capacity immediately.” He added, “Today’s signings bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all.”

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel blasted Trump’s decision to expand the facility that is on Cuban-occupied soil. “In an act of brutality, the new US government announces the imprisonment at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory Cuba, of thousands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he posted on X. 

While Trump faced stiff political resistance attempting to enforce his hardline immigration policies during his first administration, the President appears to have some support from across the aisle. One of the first pieces of legislation passed by the new Congress was the Laken Riley Act, which requires the detention of illegal immigrants charged with certain crimes.