By Leidys Maria Labrador Herrera on January 30, 2025
US prison in Guantanamo, photo: Bill Hackwell
“In an act of brutality, the new US government has announced the imprisonment at the Naval Base in Guantánamo, located in illegally occupied Cuban territory, of thousands of migrants that it is forcibly expelling, who will be placed alongside the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention.”
Thus wrote in x the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, after learning that the Naval Base at Guantánamo – which, in addition to being illegal, harbors unimaginable torture and violations of all kinds of human rights – will now also be a detention center for some 30,000 immigrants, as announced by President Donald Trump.
Although none of his controversial decisions has caused too much astonishment (coming from where they come from), it is still outrageous that he now intends to turn the territory – which, as the whole world knows, does not belong to them – into part of his strategy to remove from the United States thousands of people who have set foot in that country in search of the so-called American dream.
At the signing of the Laken Riley Act, (a law that now mandates the arrest and federal detention of illegal immigrants who are accused of theft, burglary, and assault) Trump spoke about an executive order for the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing the prison in Guantanamo for these purposes, without elaborating too much on the procedure by which the transfer will be carried out.
Since his second inauguration, the billionaire, known for his discriminatory anti-immigrant behavior, has taken the toughest measures in favor of a “cleansing” that will have terrible consequences, even for unborn children.
In the midst of this context, the new announcement comes to light, once again putting the Naval Base at Guantanamo in the crosshairs of international opinion. Many horrors have been committed there, from the kidnapping and murder of Cuban citizens to its use as a laboratory for crime and torture, under the justification of the war on terror. So far, the attempts, announcements and promises to close the prison located on the base have remained just words and, obviously, they will not do it now.
The truth is that, under the political-electioneering pretext of a “cleansing of illegal people who have invaded soil that does not belong to them”, the champions of “freedom and human rights” have found a solution to the crisis they are creating that is as horrendous as it is ironic, by transferring thousands of their deportees to that corner of Cuban soil that the US has usurped, in its shameless condition of an “illegal” foreign government that has invaded territory that does not belong to it”.
Source: Granma, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English