President Donald Trump announced that his administration plans to send the "worst foreign criminals" to a detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Mr. Trump has promised to drastically increase deportations, but he also said that for some individuals it may not be safe to stay in their countries of origin, writes A2.
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t trust them to leave them in their countries because we don’t want them back here, so I’m going to send them to Guantanamo,” Mr. Trump said. The president said he would instruct federal officials to prepare centers in Cuba to hold immigrants who have committed crimes.
"We have 30,000 beds at Guantanamo to imprison the worst foreign criminals who threaten the American people," the President said.
The White House announced shortly after that Mr. Trump had signed a presidential memorandum on Guantanamo. Immigrant rights groups expressed concern.
"Guantanamo Bay's history of abuse speaks for itself and it is clear that it will put people's physical and mental health at risk ," Stacy Suh, director of the Prison Watch Network, said in a statement.
Mr. Trump said that this decision would make it possible to double the US's detention capacity and that Guantanamo is "a difficult place to leave."
The US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is used for prisoners who have been sentenced as part of the United States' war on terrorism.
Guantanamo has an immigration center - separate from the maximum-security US prison - that has been used occasionally over the past few decades, including to house Haitian and Cuban immigrants who had been rescued at sea.
The United States has leased Guantanamo Bay from Cuba for more than a century. Cuba objects to the lease and routinely refuses U.S. rent payments. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel said Mr. Trump's idea to send immigrants to Guantanamo Bay is "an act of brutality . "
He wrote, among other things, in a post on the X network that the US government's decision to imprison immigrants at the Guantanamo naval base "shows contempt for the human condition and international law."
Mr. Trump made the announcement shortly before signing into law a bill passed by Congress to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft and violent crimes. It is the first bill signed by the President.
The bill is known as the Laken Riley Act, the nursing student from Georgia who was murdered last year by a Venezuelan national who had illegally entered the United States.
Mr. Trump called it "a historic law" and "an extraordinary honor" for the student.
The law provides that people found illegally in the US and accused of theft and violent crimes are detained and potentially deported, even before they are convicted.
Laken Riley, 22, was jogging on February 22 and was killed by Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan national who had entered the U.S. illegally. Ibarra was found guilty in November and sentenced to life in prison.
"She was a beacon of warmth and kindness," President Trump said during the signing ceremony, which was attended by the parents and sister of the slain student. "It's a tremendous honor for your daughter to be here today, that's all I can say," Mr. Trump said, adding that a historic law was being signed today that will save many lives. / Voice of America (A2 Televizion)
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