Trump orders Guantanamo Bay detention facility reopened to house 30,000 illegal immigrants
As he was signing the Laken Riley Act into law on Wednesday, President Donald Trump announced that he was ordering a Guantanamo Bay detention facility reopened to house up to 30,000 detained illegal immigrants pending their deportation from the United States.
"Today I’m also signing an Executive Order to instruct the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay — most people don’t even know about it," Trump said.
Trump said the facility would be for migrants who have committed serious crimes and that some would be held there so that their home countries didn't send them back.
"We have 30,000 beds in Guantanamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people," he continued. "Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the [home] countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo."
"Tough place"
Trump said the facility would double the government's capacity to detain migrants.
"It’s a tough place to get out of," he said.
"Today’s signings bring us one step closer to eradicating the scourge of migrant crime in our communities, once and for all," he went on. "Now we need Congress to provide full funding for the complete and total restoration of our sovereign borders, as well as financial support to remove record numbers of illegal aliens.
It won't take long for Trump to fill the facility, given that he has been deporting 1,000 illegal immigrants a day since taking office.
That number is more than triple the 300 a day under the Biden administration.
A safety issue
Unfortunately, at 1,000 a day, it will still take almost five-and-a-half years to deport the two million illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or been ordered home by immigration officials.
In total, there are an estimated 13 million illegal immigrants in the U.S.
Trump made many campaign promises about getting immigration under control--to the point where he has been accused of hating migrants or being xenophobic.
In his speech on Wednesday, he deliberately used a flat tone so that he wouldn't sound angry.
Like most Americans with common sense, Trump understands that it's not an issue about whether he or anyone likes illegal immigrants, but whether it's safe for the U.S. to have two million criminal illegal immigrants.