Attorneys, rights groups condemn Trump's move to detain migrants at Guantanamo

Several prominent human rights organizations and lawyers for prisoners held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in Cuba have strongly condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's call to use the infamous detention facility to house over 30,000 undocumented immigrants currently in the United States.

Trump's "border czar," Tom Homan, stated on Wednesday that the Trump administration would expand the existing detention facilities at Guantanamo and have them managed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "President Trump's decision to use Guantanamo—a global symbol and site of lawlessness, torture, and racism—to house immigrants should shock us all," said Vince Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), in a statement.

CCR has been one of the leading organizations representing Guantanamo detainees for the past two decades. "This order—directing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to prepare to house 30,000 people—sends a clear message: that immigrants and asylum seekers are being treated as the new terrorist threat, deserving of being discarded in an island prison, with no access to legal and social service support," Warren said. "The Center for Constitutional Rights has challenged the U.S. government's use of Guantanamo in all its forms, and we will do so again with our partners."

Trump stated that the detention facility, which currently holds around 400 people, would be used to "detain the worst of the worst illegal criminal aliens that are threatening the American people. Some of these people are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to take them back because we don’t want them back, so we’re going to put them in Guantanamo. That will immediately double our capacity, right? And, it’s tough." Trump signed a memo attempting to solidify the move. The memo did not include a set number of immigrants, but called for the expansion of the prison.

The detention center at Guantanamo Bay was established in 2002 by former President George W. Bush to hold over 800 Muslim men accused of having ties to radical groups like al-Qaeda. After most were released without being charged with a crime, 15 detainees remain in the prison. Former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both pledged to close the prison, but both Democratic presidents only managed to reduce the number of inmates. Trump has repeatedly vowed to keep the prison open. During the U.S.-led "War on Terror," the prison became a symbol of U.S. human rights abuses, where, according to human rights groups, detainees suffered a range of tortures, including waterboarding and sexual abuse.

"Guantanamo Bay has been a site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial, and other unlawful practices by the U.S. government," Amnesty International said in a statement. "President Trump should use his power to finally close the prison there, not repurpose the facility for offshore immigration detention." Before being used as a prison camp for Muslim prisoners, Guantanamo Bay was used to detain refugees and asylum seekers attempting to enter the U.S. A report by the International Refugee Assistance Project found that immigrants were "indefinitely detained in prison-like conditions, with no contact with the outside world," and often with "little transparency or accountability."