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President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered the construction of a detention camp with 30,000 beds at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, outlining plans for a site outside U.S. territory where immigrants caught in his expanding deportation campaign could be sent.
Speaking at the White House before signing the Laken Riley Act, a bill expected to expand the number of immigrant detainees held in U.S. custody for minor crimes, Trump said the massive site in Guantánamo would "detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people" and be "a tough place to get out of."
"Some of them are so bad, we don't even trust other countries to hold them, and we don't want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantánamo," Trump said. "This will double our capacity immediately."
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detention capacity for about 40,000 immigrants facing deportation. The largest facilities in its network have roughly 2,000 beds, so the Guantánamo military site Trump described would dwarf any location ICE oversees within the United States.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, during an interview on Fox News the network said was his first since narrowly being confirmed in the Senate, said the base was "a perfect place" to hold deportees.
"Beyond the facilities used to house terrorists that many are familiar with," Hegseth said, the base "is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlements."
Hegseth, who as a soldier in the National Guard was stationed at Guantánamo, said the detainees would not be held with terrorism suspects. Rather, the purpose of the camp would be for "temporary transit" while U.S. officials complete paperwork and make travel arrangements to send detainees to third countries if their home nations won't accept them, he said, noting that a golf course at the base can be used to expand detention capacity with room for 6,000 people.
It was not immediately clear how migrants will be housed, how much construction may be necessary, what the operation will cost, or what kind of aircraft may be used to transport migrants to and from the base. Officials at U.S. Southern Command, which oversees operations in Cuba, Central America and South America from a headquarters in Doral, Florida, said they were sorting through details Wednesday.
The Department of Homeland Security oversees ICE, which was already nearing max detention capacity when Trump took office and launched a deportation campaign he says will be the largest of its kind in U.S. history.
Since then teams of ICE officers backed by other federal law enforcement agencies have made about 6,000 arrests, taking more than three times as many immigrants into custody per day than they averaged under Biden.
Trump has pledged to try to deport "millions" of migrants, but one obstacle ICE faces is the reluctance or refusal of some countries to accept U.S. deportation flights and large numbers of their citizens. Trump said he would overcome their opposition.
"They're going to all take them back, and they're going to like it, too," he said to laughter from administration officials, lawmakers and others gathered for Wednesday's bill signing ceremony.
The base in eastern Cuba has previously been used by U.S. authorities to hold rafters intercepted at sea while attempting to reach the United States. About 34,000 Haitians and Cubans picked up at sea were temporarily held there base during the 1990s - but not all at once.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush administration created a maximum-security facility for terrorism suspects and enemy fighters that became notorious after detainees and attorneys denounced torture and rights violations by U.S. interrogators.
The base has periodically surfaced as a possible overflow site for migrants detained along the U.S. southern border during migration surges, such as the one Trump faced in 2019 when record numbers of Central American families crossed into the United States. It is generally viewed as a location of last resort, however, given its isolated setting and limited infrastructure.
The facility Trump described in Guantánamo Bay would potentially leave immigrant detainees with even less access to consular and legal services than they currently have in U.S. immigration jails. And the use of military bases has raised concerns among ICE officials and immigrant advocates regarding the adaptation of barracks that do not meet detention and safety standards for secure facilities.
Aside from Hegseth's statements on Fox, defense officials had no initial reaction to questions about the plan. The Pentagon referred questions to the White House. In a memo to Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem directing the expansion of Guantanamo's "Migrant Operations Center" to "full capacity," Trump said the move was necessary to "halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty."
Earlier Wednesday, Noem revoked a Biden administration attempt to extend temporary protections for 600,000 Venezuelans. The government of Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro does not allow ICE to send deportation flights there.
Riley, a Georgia nursing student whose name is on the legislation Trump signed, was attacked and killed last February while jogging by a migrant from Venezuela, Jose Ibarra. He was not deported despite accumulating a criminal record in the United States before the attack. Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison last November.
Rep. MarĂa Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), a Trump ally, said in a social media post that the president is negotiating an agreement with the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, to accept deported members of Venezuela's "Tren de Aragua" gang.
Bukele has used military troops to round up tens of thousands of gang members and others with suspected ties, jailing them in a newly built prison, the largest in Central America, that has become a showcase for his firm-handed rule.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is scheduled to visit El Salvador in coming days, and Trump has ordered his administration to relaunch agreements - canceled under President Joe Biden - that allow U.S. immigration authorities to ship asylum seekers to other nations designated "safe."
Trump officials have ramped up immigration arrests across the United States since the president took office, and the campaign is quickly maxing out U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention capacity.
In Colorado, where teams of ICE officers and federal agents are making arrests in the Denver metro area, a military base will serve as a temporary detention center for immigrants facing deportation, Defense Department officials said.
In a statement, military officials said they would provide facilities at Buckley Space Force Base on the outskirts of Aurora for ICE "to stage and process criminal aliens." The site will be operated by ICE officials and other federal law enforcement agencies, not the U.S. military, according to U.S. Northern Command. Buckley spans roughly six square miles, and is home to both Space Force operations and a unit of F-16 fighter jets from the Colorado Air National Guard.
Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado), an Army veteran whose district includes Buckley, said he is "deeply concerned" that the installation could be used for "mass deportation efforts."
"Pulling our military into politicized and contentious domestic immigration enforcement dishonors the service of our troops and distracts them from the important work of defending our nation," Crow said in a statement. "Perhaps most disturbingly, it could force our service members to assist in the detention and deportation of peaceful members of the community."
Trump has ordered the Pentagon to take on a larger role in U.S. border security and immigration enforcement. Military officials are sending 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to bolster a force of 2,500 already there and have prepared to send more than 10,000. Additionally, deportation flights to Guatemala, Colombia and Ecuador, using Air Force C-17s, have departed from border areas loaded with migrants caught attempting to enter the United States recently.
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