Memo shows U.S. can send migrants without criminal records to Guantanamo, despite Trump’s promise to hold “the worst” there
A government memo obtained by CBS News shows the Trump administration created broad rules outlining which migrants can be held at Guantanamo Bay, allowing officials to send non-criminal detainees there despite a vow to hold “the worst” offenders at the naval base.
As part of his aggressive crackdown on immigration, President Trump in late January directed officials to convert facilities inside the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, into holding sites for migrants living in the country illegally. At the time, Mr. Trump said “the worst” migrants would be held at the base, directing officials to make space for “high-priority criminal aliens.”
But a previously undisclosed agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense indicates that the Trump administration gave officials wide-ranging discretion to decide who to send to Guantanamo Bay, enacting criteria not predicated on the severity of detainees’ criminal history or conduct. In fact, the memo does not mention any criminality assessment. [Read the full memo at the bottom of this story.]
Instead, the agreement, signed on March 7 by top DHS and Pentagon officials, says the departments agreed to use the Guantanamo base to detain migrants with final deportation orders who have “a nexus to a transnational criminal organization (TCO) or criminal drug activity.”
Officials defined “nexus” in broad terms. A nexus can be satisfied, the memo says, if migrants with final deportation orders are part of a transnational criminal group or if they paid one “to be smuggled into the United States.” The latter condition could be used to describe many of the migrants and asylum-seekers who have illegally crossed the U.S. southern border, as criminal groups in Mexico largely control the illicit movement of people and drugs there.
Migrants who overstayed a visa are not eligible to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, the document says. But if the nature of a migrant’s entry is unclear, the memo allows officials to assume that the person paid a criminal group to enter the U.S. and to send them to Guantanamo if they hail from a nation “where the preponderance of aliens from that country enter the United States in that fashion.”
The conditions for transferring migrants to Guantanamo, as outlined in the memo, seem to be at odds with statements by Mr. Trump and high-ranking members of his administration that have suggested the base would be used as a detention site for dangerous criminals.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former U.S. immigration official during the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, said the memo’s rules “apply very broadly to any immigrant who came to the U.S. via the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“It’s very well known that almost every immigrant who makes it to the U.S.-Mexico border would have to pay some sort of money to the cartels that control the territory on the Mexican side, directly or indirectly,” she said.
Cardinal Brown added that the rules do not appear to include “any individualized assessment” to determine whether migrant detainees pose a threat, before transferring them to Guantanamo.
Department of Defense spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson confirmed the existence of the memo, saying it “strengthens DoD and DHS collaboration by clarifying roles and responsibilities, and fostering efficient and coordinated operations at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay.”
CBS News reached out to DHS representatives for comment.
The Guantanamo operation is not the only Trump administration immigration effort to face scrutiny over who exactly has been targeted. In mid-March, for example, the administration deported 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, so they could be imprisoned inside that country’s infamous mega-prison. The Trump administration said they were all criminals and gang members, but a “60 Minutes” investigation did not find a criminal record for 75% of the Venezuelan deportees.
A high-profile yet largely secretive operation
The Trump administration first began sending migrants to Guantanamo in February, initially only transferring Venezuelans there, including men it accused of having ties to the Tren de Aragua prison gang. The first group of Venezuelan detainees was eventually flown to Honduras, where the Venezuelan government picked them up so they could be transported back to their homeland.
Since then, the administration has sporadically flown migrants from different countries to the base, before transferring them back to the U.S. or other nations. Administration officials have regularly touted the flights to Guantanamo but have provided limited details about the operation, including on costs and who is eligible to be sent to the base.
What has been publicly revealed, by CBS News and other media outlets, is that officials have transferred both detainees considered to be “high-threat” and “low-risk” to Guantanamo, including migrants whose relatives have denied allegations of gang membership and criminality.
Government guidelines define migrant detainees as posing a “high” threat if they have violent or serious criminal records, histories of disruptive conduct or alleged gang ties. Low-risk detainees are defined as migrants who face deportation because they are in the U.S. illegally but who lack any serious criminal record — or any at all.
Those sent to Guantanamo and considered to be “high-threat” migrants have been held at Camp VI, a section of the post-9/11 prison that still houses roughly a dozen terrorism suspects. Migrant detainees deemed to pose a “low” risk have been transferred to the base’s Migrant Operations Center, a barrack-like facility that has historically housed asylum-seekers intercepted at sea.
Wilson, the Department of Defense spokeswoman, said there are currently 42 migrants detained at Guantanamo, 32 of them housed at the Migrant Operations Center and 10 so-called “high-threat” detainees held at Camp VI.
The March 7 memo obtained by CBS News sheds light on other aspects of operations at Guantanamo. For example, it confirms the migrant detainees transported there remain in the legal custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, even though the military is providing access to its facilities to detain them.
As part of the agreement, DHS also accepted the conditions at Camp VI and the Migrant Operations Center as adequate to hold migrant adults, noting it would not transfer children to the base. The department agreed to send ICE officers or contractors to the base, including to oversee security at the Migrant Operations Center.
The memo makes DHS responsible for providing detainees services like recreation and religious accommodations; determining whether migrants get access to lawyers; and administering “involuntary medical treatment,” such as force-feeding during hunger strikes.
The agreement also charges DHS with overseeing the transfer of detainees from and to Guantanamo, requiring the department to relocate migrants from the base no more than 180 days after their deportation orders are issued.
The military, as stipulated by the agreement, is principally responsible for providing security at Camp VI and in the perimeter of the facilities. It also agreed to provide toilets and hygiene facilities, as well as medical care to both ICE personnel and detained migrants.
The memo says the Department of Defense committed to erect tents at the base to hold additional detainees, though those sites have not been used to detain migrants yet. The agreement notes, however, that those tents “do not have power, lighting, or heating/air conditioning.”
The effort to hold migrants at Guantanamo faces legal challenges by advocates, including at the American Civil Liberties Union, the Trump administration’s chief adversary in federal court.
The ACLU alleged in court filings that migrants were initially held incommunicado at Guantanamo, without access to relatives or lawyers. The administration subsequently said it took steps to give migrant detainees access to lawyers.
The ACLU has also described detention conditions at Guantanamo as deplorable, citing declarations from migrants held there. In one of those declarations, a Venezuelan man previously held at the base said he went on a hunger strike after feeling he had been “kidnapped.”
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the lead architect of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, said earlier this week there are no plans to stop using Guantanamo to detain migrants.
“It’s wide open,” Miller said on Fox News. “Gitmo is open.”
Read the memo below:
contributed to this report.
