WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump said Wednesday he planned to detain “criminal illegal aliens” at the notorious Guantanamo Bay military prison, used for holding terrorism suspects since the 9/11 attacks.
Trump made the shock announcement as he signed a bill allowing the pre-trial detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft and violent crime — named after a US student killed by a Venezuelan immigrant.
He said he was signing an executive order instructing the Pentagon and the Homeland Security department to “begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said at the White House.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back,” Trump said. The Republican said the move would “double our capacity immediately” to hold illegal migrants, amid a huge crackdown that he has promised at the start of his second term. Calling Guantanamo a “tough place to get out of,” Trump said the measures announced on Wednesday would “bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities once and for all.”
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