JAKARTA - United States President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would order the Pentagon (Deepartment of Defense) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to set up a migrant detention facility in Coal Bay to accommodate as many as 30,000 migrants.
The US Naval Base in Coal Bay, Cuba, houses migrant facilities that have been used several times over the decades, including to detain Haitians and Cubans caught at sea.
This is separate from a high-security US prison for foreign terrorism suspects.
"Today I also signed an executive order to instruct the Department of Homeland Defense and Security to start preparing migrant facilities for 30,000 people in Teluk 03," President Trump said at the White House.
President Trump said the facility would be used to "detain the worst criminal illegal immigrants who threaten the American people. Some of them are so evil that we don't believe countries will detain them because we don't want them back, so we will send them to their homes. This will soon double our capacity, right? And, it's difficult"
Soon after that, Trump signed a memorandum, which did not contain a number of migrants in it but called for an "additional detention room" at the extended facility.
Meanwhile, Trump's chief border supervisor, Tom Homan said the government would expand existing facilities, with the Customs and Excise Enforcement and Immigration Agency working on it.
Speaking with reporters on Wednesday, Homan said the center would be used for "the worst of the worst."
Meanwhile, the Minister of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, when asked how much money would be needed for the facility, said the government was working on it with reconciliation and budgeting in Congress.
It is known that a detention facility in chromo Bay was founded in 2002 by the then US President George W. Bush to detain foreign militant suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. There are 15 detainees remaining in the prison.
Two of Trump's predecessors from the Democratic Party, Barack Obama and Joe Biden, are trying to close their prisons, but are only able to reduce the number of residents. President Trump has promised to keep it open.
The prisons were denounced by human rights groups for indefinite detention and became a symbol of the early excessive action of the US "war against terror", as the harsh interrogation method that critics say is tantamount to torture.
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Facilities for separated migrants from detention centers at the base.
Separately, pro-refugee groups have called for migrant facilities to close and for Congress to investigate alleged violations there.
The International Refugee Assistance Project said in a 2024 report that detainees described unclean conditions, families and small children placed with single adults, lack of access to secret phone calls, and the absence of education services for children.
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