The first flights carrying illegal migrants are en route to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, the White House announced on Tuesday, as President Donald Trump continues to crack down on people entering the US unlawfully.
“President Trump is not messing around and he's no longer going to allow America to be a dumping ground for illegal criminals from nations all over this world,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News, adding that the new administration is delivering on promises to deport those who have “committed heinous crimes against American citizens”.
Mr Trump signed an order last week that called for the expansion of the “migrant operations centre” at the US naval base in Cuba to full capacity “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States”. The base is best known for the high-security prison that houses terrorism suspects, including men accused of planning the 9/11 attacks, but it also has a centre for holding migrants.
The news comes as the Trump administration continues to lean hard on Latin American leaders to repatriate their citizens who have been or will be deported from the US. Last week, Colombia refused to allow military planes carrying deported migrants to land in its territory, but, after tit-for-tat tariff threats, agreed to allow planes to land.
Meanwhile, late on Monday, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said he would allow the US to “outsource” part of its prison system to his country.
“We are willing to take in only convicted criminals (including convicted US citizens) into our mega-prison (Cecot) in exchange for a fee,” Mr Bukele wrote in a post on X. “The fee would be relatively low for the US but significant for us, making our entire prison system sustainable.”
The Terrorism Confinement Centre, or Cecot for its name in Spanish, is a newly constructed maximum security prison Tecoluca, El Salvador, that has the capacity to house thousands of inmates. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio embarked on his first official visit to El Salvador and other Central American countries this week in a further signal of the importance the Trump administration is placing on the issue of illegal immigration.
Mr Rubio called the potential agreement with Mr Bukele “the most unprecedented, extraordinary, extraordinary migratory agreement anywhere in the world”.
“We can send them, and he will put them in his jails,” he said. “And he’s also offered to do the same for dangerous criminals currently in custody and serving their sentences in the United States even though they’re US citizens or legal residents.”
Mr Bukele has become a celebrity in some conservative US circles for his efforts to crack down on violent gang activity in the country. The government has carried out mass detentions of accused gang members, often holding them for lengthy periods that culminate in mass trials. Mr Bukele's government has claimed that El Salvador was the safest country in the world in 2024.
