Today, Explained - Guantanamo’s other history

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

The Trump administration has begun detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay. For more than 40 years, the US has sent immigrants to Gitmo, explains Jeffrey Kahn of UC Davis, who interviewed asylum-seekers there. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard and Amanda Lewellyn, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Noel King. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members A 1992 image of a refugee camp at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay where Haitians were detained. Photo by © Steve Starr/CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

President Trump promised to send 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo Bay, and his administration is now doing it. Here's Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on CNN this weekend after making a trip herself to Gitmo. These individuals are the worst of the worst that we pulled off of our streets. Who are they? Murders, rapists. When I was there, I was able to watch one of the flights landing and them unload about

15 different of these criminals. Those were mainly child pedophiles, those that were out there trafficking children, trafficking drugs, and were pulled off of our streets. Now, it's impossible to fact check that statement at the moment because the government hasn't released the names of four dozen or so men who've been sent there so far. Coming up on Today Explained, what we do know about Trump's big moves on immigration. Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it

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I'm Nick Miroff. I cover the Department of Homeland Security for the Washington Post. What is the state, Nick, of the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policy, which promised big things right now today? Well, I'd say the state of it is very aggressive. 7,500 violent illegals have been captured by ICE in the last nine days. God bless them. Multiple communities across Chicago are feeling the impacts of what ICE is calling targeted operations. And they were like knee deep in front of my door. And they were asking me if I was American or if I was legal. More aggressive than Trump's first term, and he took office, you know, back then in 2017

promising millions of deportations. But we didn't see the kind of approach that we're seeing now where not only the Department of Homeland Security, but all these other federal agencies have been enlisted in this broader effort to increase arrests, increase deportations, and carry out what the president sees, I think, is one of his biggest, if not most important, campaign promise. All right. So President Trump has directed that migrants be sent to Guantanamo Bay. What did his order say exactly?

What are the specifics here? Well, the order is basically to the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security and it says, you know, use the Guantanamo Bay facility to expand polling capacity for dangerous criminals, but then also for whatever purposes you see fit. And that's kind of the key here. They seem to be looking at it both as a place where they can send, in particular, Venezuelan suspected gang members

who they have a hard time detaining and who have been really a focus of a lot of the governments, the Trump administration's messaging around the worst of the worst criminals. Well, some of them are so bad, we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back. So we're going to send them out to Guantanamo. But then they also are looking for capacity.

This will double our capacity immediately, right? And tough. That's a tough place to get out of. They do not have the space in the United States and their existing network of facilities to suddenly increase by thousands and thousands of people. And so that's going to be, you know, that's the thing I'm really looking for. Do they plan to really bring, you know, up to 30,000 people, as President Trump said, to this site off, you know, outside the United States? Trump said to this site off outside the United States.

Is it accurate that we don't have facilities inside the continental United States for that many people? What do you know about that? Well, it's not quite accurate in that sense. So ICE is funded to be able to detain about 40,000 people at any given time in its network of detention facilities. And those consist of mostly privately run jails, but then also county jails that rent beds out to ICE for relatively short-term detentions.

We're talking usually about a few weeks. For the duration of the amount of time it takes ICE to get somebody ready to be deported and to get them on a plane and back to their home country. And so, the thing to keep in mind here is that President Trump has launched this incredibly aggressive enforcement operation with the kind of existing infrastructure of ICE. It's just an unforced error

that we even have to be doing this. Now we need Congress to provide full funding for the complete and total restoration of our sovereign borders, as well as financial support to remove record numbers of illegal aliens. ICE hasn't gotten new money. It hasn't gotten a huge increase in officers, and it certainly hasn't gotten a big increase in the number of beds it has available. And so, while its current network is maxed out, it can look to expand by adding more beds in county jails.

We know that it's already talking to private contractors about expanding what they're able to offer. And then they've also looked at military bases in the United States where they could potentially hold people. And I'd actually add one more option that they're looking at and this really kind of underscores the all of The above approach which is that there are what they call soft-sided Facilities along the border basically tent camps that they have used in previous years to deal with surges and border crossings And so they've been using them as kind of processing centers for migrants coming into the country

And I think that you know, they going to be looking to see if they can repurpose some of those to hold people who they're trying to send out. What is going on at Guantanamo Bay right now? Has anyone arrived there? Are things being built? Yeah, so, so far they've sent about 30 detainees there on a series of flights, and they are being held in the holding facility for the military detainees, but then also for some of these other migrants. They're essentially being kept in kind of

a separate legal distinction, but separately they are eyeing this broader area where they would potentially build an outdoor holding facility. We know that there have been dozens of tents set up for workers there. They appear to be staging other construction materials in preparation for the expansion of this camp. And so the question is going to be, how many people are they going to really try to send there? And then, know, our US federal courts can allow that.

What do we know about the, the men, and I'm assuming they're all men who have arrived so far, are they, I mean, President Trump says, we're going to send the worst of the worst there. Are these men criminals? What are they accused of other than being in the US illegally? Well, that's the thing. We don't know anything about them. I mean, the government hasn't released their names.

It doesn't said what they're charged with, with they've been convicted. We just have sort of broad outlines and know that they're primarily have been, you know, Venezuelan males who are accused by the government of being Tren de Aragua gang members. That's a Venezuelan prison gang whose members have showed up in the United States and

have been linked to crimes over the past few years as part of this broader historic wave of Venezuelan migration. Whether or not they really are Tren de Ragua gang members, no one can assess at this point unless the government starts to tell us more or we see actual information released about why they were sent there and who they are. And in the absence of that, we just really don't know. As the Trump administration said, what the plan is for people when they get there. Is the idea that we detain them indefinitely? Is the idea that we deport them as quickly as we can? Yeah. So I think the idea is that this is supposed to be some sort of staging facility, right?

It's not... People aren't being detained there in a criminal penal context as a punishment. They're being sent there because their home countries wouldn't take them back or because the Department of Homeland Security doesn't have the capacity to detain people that it needs to detain until they can be deported. So kind of like a way station, a holding facility, that type of thing. But if you don't have all of the other infrastructure elements

that go along with deportations, including legal counsel and court access and consular access and all those types of things, then that could potentially slow down the whole deportation process. Let me ask you lastly, this particular move has gotten the Trump administration a lot of attention, probably, possibly because of the way the American public conceives of Guantanamo Bay, right? What we've known since 9-11. How does sending people there fit into the administration's larger plans for illegal immigration? Well, I think a big part of it is fear and intimidation,

right? This is the Trump administration's attempt to scare people and to potentially make the decision to leave the country. It's a sign of the president's toughness and commitment to his supporters that he wants to use this notorious facility to handle criminal immigrants, the kinds of folks that he campaigned against on his run for president. And so it creates a climate of intimidation around his mass deportation effort.

And then I think in the short term, it solves the capacity problem in terms of giving him a place potentially where they can put thousands of people if they don't have space for them here in the United States because they don't have facilities that can meet the detention standards that they need. The big one to me is the kind of fear factor and the symbolism of it

and the impression that it creates for his supporters. Nick Miroff covers immigration for the Washington Post, coming up the last time the U.S. held migrants at Guantanamo Bay. Support for today explained comes from Quince, who doesn't like a little luxury every once in a while? I say to myself when I buy the nice tortillas, but sometimes as much as people love to indulge in some of the finer things in life, you can do a real number on their wallets. But not with Quince, my friends. With Quince, they say you can get luxury essentials at affordable prices like 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters washable silk tops and dresses organic cotton sweaters and 14 karat gold jewelry

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heard about Indeed on this show. Indeed.com slash today explained. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring? Indeed is all you need. You are listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Jeffrey Kahn, who has been to Guantanamo Bay. Jeff's a professor of anthropology at UC Davis, and he studies

how border policing in the U.S. evolved. And he says it began to evolve at Guantanamo Bay in the 1970s with an influx of Haitian refugees to the United States. The history of Guantanamo as a site for detaining asylum seekers has a really fascinating and also tragic history that goes back to the 1970s. So in 1972, Haitian asylum seekers start fleeing the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier in Haiti and arriving on the shores of South Florida. Not allowed to work. The men mostly wait.

Wait until authorities decide to jail them, deport them, or give them political asylum. Others actually end up at the US Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay. And that's largely by accident. But what happens is, the Haitians who end up at Guantanamo are sent back to Haiti. Now, at the same time, the folks who are ending up in South Florida, the U.S. Immigration Naturalization Service is also trying to send them back to Haiti.

But they get access to attorneys. I think that we can show in almost every case that these Haitians were actively opposed to the Duvalier government, but I'm not sure that we ought to have that burden of proof. And a large number of those Haitians, close to all of them, actually end up getting some sort of legal status, eventually, in the United States.

In 1980, there's the Mariel boat lift, over 125,000 Cubans arrive in the United States. U.S. Marines are now on duty at Key West to keep order among the restless refugees. Many of those who have arrived in the States tell horror stories of being beaten by pro-Castro Cubans and secret police. During that next year, about 20,000 Haitians arrive in the United States as well. And when President Reagan comes into office, he attempts to deal with this issue of asylum seekers arriving directly on U.S. soil.

Our objective is only to establish a reasonable, fair, orderly and secure system of immigration into this country and not to discriminate in any way against particular nations or people. So from 1981 to 1989, Haitians who are stopped at sea are ostensibly screened for asylum characteristics on Coast Guard cutters. And only six out of 21,461 who are screened get to come to the U.S. to pursue their asylum claims. Then in 1991, the first democratically elected president of Haiti, Jean Bertrand Aristide, is overthrown and thousands of Haitians take to the sea

in an attempt to reach the United States to seek refuge. take to the sea in an attempt to reach the United States to seek refuge. So the US government says, all right, what are we gonna do now? We have thousands of Haitians piling up on these Coast Guard vessels in the Northern Caribbean. Should we bring them to the United States? Well, if we do, then they're gonna get access

to US courts and we're gonna get access to US courts and we're gonna have to deal with the US court system scrutinizing how we're handling these claims. The other option is, well, let's send them to Guantanamo. And so that's what they do. And so they end up opening up a camp at Guantanamo Bay to detain and to screen for asylum characteristics, the Haitians that they stopped at sea.

At its peak in the 1991, 1992 period, you have over 12,000 Haitians being detained in these camps. So it's a vast tent city, it's crowded, it's miserable, and it's also vast tent city, it's crowded, it's miserable, and it's also confusing, right? The Haitians who are there are not exactly sure what their fate is gonna be. They're not exactly sure how these immigration screenings operate.

They don't have access to attorneys to inform them about the particularities of US immigration and refugee law. And there's a feeling like they're in a state of limbo and they're not in control of their destiny. The biggest problem right now in the camp with the kids is they're frustrated. They've been here a long time and they're ready to go home. Actually, they're ready to go anywhere at this point. It's not an ideal situation to be in.

Maybe you've spent a couple weeks at sea, maybe shorter, depends, but you've gone through some sort of a difficult voyage. The Coast Guard picks you up, takes you to Guantanamo. Sometimes it may take a while for you to get to Guantanamo, so you're crowded onto these, the deck of a Coast Guard cutter exposed to the elements.

And then when you arrive, you have to undergo what's called a credible fear screening to find out if you have a credible fear of persecution, which is supposed to be lower than the well-founded fear of persecution standard that governs asylum claims within the United States. Now, what happens at the time is the United States was hoping to resettle some of these Haitian asylum seekers

who had passed their credible fear interviews in third countries other than the United States. But those third countries, according to the government, had asked that the Haitians be screened to determine whether or not they were HIV positive. So what the government does is they screen Haitians who have been shown to meet this credible fear standard for HIV. And then if they test positive, they're not brought to the United States and they're put

in a separate HIV camp on the base. And according to the Haitians who were there, told that they may be required to stay there indefinitely. Later on what happens is the government plans to hold full-blown asylum hearings for these HIV positive Haitians at the base without attorneys. So the folks in the HIV camp faced pretty rough conditions. The camp itself was in a remote part of the base, which now houses a lot of the war on terror detention facilities.

But at the time, it was sequestered from the populated areas of the base. And the Haitians really felt that. They're out in the middle of nowhere. They're isolated. They're told that they may have to stay here forever. And the conditions are poor. They had to take sheets of plastic and put them up on the windows of the shelters in which they live to keep the rain out.

They complained of infestations of rats. They complained of abuses on the part of the military. When they formed protests, they were met with a draconian response, including pre-dawn raids by hundreds of military police with police dogs. And this prolonged sense of limbo ended up creating really difficult conditions and a very traumatic experience

for the Haitians who were held there. And so when I've conducted interviews with folks who were held in the HIV camp, and it almost always brings them to tears when they remember their experiences being held in this HIV prison camp at Guantanamo. At the time that the HIV camp was shut down, the U.S. was not sending any Haitians to Guantanamo any longer.

Now when Clinton came into office, Guantanamo was reopened again and Haitians were sent to Guantanamo in 1994. And we are discussing what our response should be. There has been a significant increase in Haitian refugees. Cubans started taking to the sea and makeshift rafts and the US decided to send them to Guantanamo as well. And so you had this period in 1994 and 1995 where you had tens of thousands of Haitians and tens of thousands of Cubans at Guantanamo

at the same time. So since 1991, effectively, there has been a migrant detention operation at Guantanamo. In 2002, the creation of the Migrant Operations Center paved the way for small numbers of asylum seekers to be held at the base. And there's a specific process that governs the detention there.

And the idea is to send a message to people fleeing their home countries in the Caribbean, that if they attempt to reach the United States by sea, they will be picked up. And in very rare circumstances, if they pass their credible fear interview, they'll be sent to Guantanamo, but they will never reach the United States.

Hey, so Jeff, is Donald Trump actually doing anything that we weren't already doing? Like this has made so much news. Why? No immigrants have ever been sent to Guantanamo from the United States. This is the first time that has ever happened, right? This is, from my perspective, in large part political theater. The Trump administration has been hammering this idea that the crisis at the border is an invasion and an invasion requires a military response.

And so what better way to equate immigrants with an invading army than to send them to Guantanamo, which is this place that in the public imagination is associated with the war on terror, with a war footing, kind of exceptional reaction, exceptional powers. The use of Guantanamo to detain immigrants currently in the United States

is doing a lot of symbolic work for the Trump administration. The messaging in some ways is very old, but the use of Guantanamo in this way is intended to cement in the public imagination this equation between immigrants and an invading army of criminal aliens. Jeffrey Kahn, UC Davis Anthropology, spent time at Guantanamo Bay, interviewing Haitian migrants in the early aughts.

Victoria Chamberlain produced today's show, Amina El-Sadi edited, Laura Bullard and Amanda Llewellyn checked the facts, Andrea Christens' daughter and Patrick Boyd are our engineers, and I'm Noelle King, it's Today Explained. you