Pentagon confirms preparations being made at Guantanamo Bay to receive migrants to be deported

 

The US Department of Defense on Sunday confirmed the arrival of 500 Marines at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to set up facilities that will hold migrants set to be deported from the United States.

 

The Pentagon said on social media that the troops were there "to prepare to expand the Migrant Operations Center," as the Trump administration prepares to follow through on the president's comments last week that the base will be used to temporarily house as many as 30,000 deported migrants who are awaiting processing to return to their home countries.

 

A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that planning was  underway for deportation flights to take deported migrants to Guantanamo Bay.

 

 

On Sunday, Professor, Ivelaw Griffith, an expert on regional security issues, observed that moving some of the detainees to Guantanamo Bay on a temporary basis could provide some "breathing space" for the recipient countries while they prepare to receive their nationals. 

Griffith, a Fellow of the Caribbean Policy Consortium and Senior Associate of the Center for Strategic & International Studies, who spoke on Radio Jamaica's That's a Rap, suggested that "if Jamaicans are sent to Guantanamo for a couple of months or a year, it will be a kind of release valve  for Jamaica itself," rather than having to take them all back "at one swoop."

Human Rights

He quickly conceded however that such a move would be fraught with danger, given the reputation for the US base in Guantanamo for abuse of detainees held there in recent decades.

"We can't be sure," he said when asked whether there would be any guarantee that the human rights of the detainees would be respected and upheld, "because the guy (Trump) is not interested in human rights; he's not concerned about legality."