US troops arrived at the controversial Guantanamo Bay naval facility in Cuba over the weekend to begin constructing a migrant detention center ordered by President Donald Trump, the Pentagon confirmed on Monday.
“At the direction of the President of the United States to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Defense, U.S. military personnel arrived at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, joining those already stationed at the base supporting operations for holding illegal immigrants led by DHS,” the Pentagon statement read.
Trump had instructed the Pentagon on Wednesday to create the facility to house “the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
“Some of them are so dangerous we don’t even trust their home countries to keep them, because we don’t want them coming back,” he said.
This move adds another costly and urgent task for the military, which is already working to fulfill Trump’s separate order to deploy additional troops to the southern border.
Over 150 Marines and Army personnel are currently at the site to assist with constructing the facility, which Trump envisions as having the capacity to detain around 30,000 undocumented migrants. This is a sharp increase from the 780 detainees held there during the peak of the US War on Terror. Guantanamo Bay is also home to the notorious military prison, where prisoners have been detained and often exposed to suffering since the aftershock of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
