Service members arrived over the weekend at Guantanamo Bay, where they’ll work to prepare the Navy base in southeast Cuba for an influx of deported migrants.
Marines with the 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, 2d Marine Division boarded a KC-130J at Cherry Point Air Station in North Carolina on Sunday and departed for Naval Station Guantanamo Bay. There, they joined personnel from U.S. Southern Command and U.S. Army South, bringing the total number of service members deployed to the base for the migrant holding operation to 150.
The Marines and soldiers will provide support for a White House plan to deport immigrants lacking permanent legal status from the United States and detain them at the base. This comes as part of a sweeping effort by President Donald Trump, announced Jan. 29, to use Guantanamo as a holding ground for “high-priority criminal aliens.”
Trump said he was directing an expansion of a detention center on the naval base to hold up to 30,000 migrants.
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“This memorandum is issued in order to halt the border invasion, dismantle criminal cartels, and restore national sovereignty,” reads the White House memorandum that directed the expansion of such a facility.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a Jan. 31 interview on Fox News that the U.S. military would “be a key element of expulsions and mass deportations.”
If immigrants lacking legal status are unable to be sent back to their home country or an interim destination, Hegseth explained, they will be held at Guantanamo. He referred to the Navy base a “transit hub.”
The holding operations at Guantanamo are being led by the Department of Homeland Security.
“It’s a good solution for us and can be stood up quite quickly,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said of the expanded detention center during an interview with Fox News on Sunday.
In the interview, Noem urged Congress to approve more funding for DHS that would allow the department to build more detention centers, prosecute criminal migrants and “fix our legal immigration system.”
The same day Trump announced Guantanamo Bay’s newest iteration, he signed into law the Laken Riley Act, a measure requiring DHS to detain undocumented immigrants who are arrested for burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting.
Riley Ceder is a reporter at Military Times, where he covers breaking news, criminal justice, investigations, and cyber. He previously worked as an investigative practicum student at The Washington Post, where he contributed to the Abused by the Badge investigation.
