Trump official declines to say whether women, children to be held at Guantanamo

Asked repeatedly connected NBC News whether women, children and families would beryllium among those held astatine the detention center, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declined to straight answer.

“We’re going to usage the facilities that we have,” she told NBC‘s “Meet the Press” program. “We person different detention facilities, different places successful the country. So, we volition utilize what we person according to what’s due for the individuals.”

In abstracted Sunday interviews, Noem and Homan some reiterated that the medication was targeting “the worst of the worst” with its sweeps to detain radical who are successful the United States illegally, noting that a caller enforcement enactment successful New York City focused connected individuals with transgression apprehension warrants.

“The worst of the worst request to spell to Guantanamo Bay,” Homan told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” program. “We’ve had a migrant processing halfway determination for decades … We’re going to grow it a lot.”

Noem said that the program was not to clasp radical astatine Guantanamo indefinitely and that the medication would travel US law. “The program is to person a process that we travel that’s laid retired successful instrumentality and marque definite that we’re dealing with these individuals appropriately,” she said. “But it is an plus that we person that we afloat mean to utilize.”

Noem reiterated that the Homeland Security Department would enactment with Congress connected the installation but gave nary different details. Democratic Senator Mark Kelly told NBC the determination to grow migrant detention astatine Guantanamo “just sounds precise frightening to a batch of folk.”

The medication has not said however overmuch it would outgo to grow Guantanamo, which was established successful 2002 to detain overseas militants successful the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks connected the United States. Its high-security US situation was criticized successful 2023 by a United Nations expert, who said the US authorities attraction of Guantanamo Bay inmates was cruel, inhuman and degrading nether planetary law.

The basal besides includes a migrant installation that has been utilized to detain Haitians and Cubans picked up astatine oversea arsenic they processed their asylum cases during the Clinton administration.

Recent Democratic presidents person sought to adjacent the base, which has agelong been condemned by quality rights groups for indefinite detention and reports of maltreatment and torture. Migrant and exile advocacy groups person besides called connected Congress to analyse alleged abuses. Trump, who took bureau January 20, has vowed to support the aging subject basal open.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has besides received US subject support to detain migrants astatine different installations, including Buckley Space Force Base successful Colorado.