Trump Administration Begins Flying Migrants to Guantanamo

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration has started flying detained migrants on a military aircraft to Guantanamo Bay after the president ordered a large-scale effort to prepare for thousands of prisoners to be sent to the US naval base in Cuba.

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“Today the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an interview on Fox Business on Tuesday. A US military C-17 aircraft has taken off from Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, according to a US Transportation Command statement to Bloomberg News.

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Last month, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the expansion of a migrant detention center at the military installation to full capacity, saying it could hold up to 30,000 people. While the US has previously housed small numbers of migrants at Guantanamo, primarily those intercepted at sea, its not been used in years for large-scale detention.

The administration hasn’t said how many migrants are in the initial group or provided details on their backgrounds, including whether any have criminal records.

The transfers come a day after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced an agreement with El Salvador to deport foreign criminals, and potentially some US citizens to that country.

“President Trump is not messing around and he’s no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all around the world,” Leavitt told Fox Business.

Since taking office, Trump has issued a series of executive orders and launched high-profile raids targeting illegal immigration, leading to thousands of arrests by federal agents.

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Officials say many of those detained have criminal histories, but the administration has not released a full accounting, making it difficult to verify how many convicted or suspected criminals have been deported.

The prospect of using the Guantanamo base for migrants, which has also housed terrorism suspects since shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, has long been criticized by immigrant rights groups who have warned such a move would bypass legal protections in place for many migrants.

(Updates with details on flight from first paragraph.)

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