Using Gitmo for criminal aliens is a win-win for America

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump breathed new life into our naval base at Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo), Cuba, which will support his campaign promise to rid America of criminal aliens. Specifically, he directed the Pentagon to prepare Gitmo to house up to 30,000 criminal aliens, a winning decision for America.

In part, President Trump was re-elected on the promise to get tough on illegal aliens. After all, under President Joe Biden’s open border policy, many millions of illegal aliens flooded into this country, including an unknown number with long rap sheets, violent gang members, and not a few terrorists.

Pres. Trump’s Gitmo directive was announced during the signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, which was named after a 22-year-old nursing student from Georgia viciously raped and murdered by an illegal alien in 2024. The president said at the ceremony that his decision to use Gitmo is meant “to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar and director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), said that ICE would run the Gitmo detention center. He promised the facility would “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

There are at least three reasons that justify using Gitmo to detain “the worst criminal aliens.”

First, it is outside the United States in a remote, secure location. Such a place is necessary because some nations are refusing to accept the repatriation of their citizens who are illegally in this country. Further, some of those same nations might agree to repatriate their citizens but would fail to retain them. Thus, some of these violent people would inevitably return to the United States.

Therefore, hosting a detention facility for illegal, violent aliens at Gitmo is ideal.

Second, shipping dangerous criminal aliens to Gitmo brings us one step closer to “eradicating the scourge” of migrant crime. This decision isn’t that different than using the base to detain Al-Qaeda terrorists. But, of course, not everyone is happy with this decision.

Cuba’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, labeled Trump’s order to send 30,000 criminal aliens to Gitmo an “act of brutality.” Further, the Cuban dictator alleges our base at Gitmo is “illegally occupied territory” and well-known as a “torture and illegal detention” facility.

Trump’s secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, told a Fox News audience that Gitmo is a perfect alternative to sending illegal criminal aliens back to their countries of origin. Hegseth, who was stationed at Gitmo from 2004 to 2005 as a U.S. Army officer, said the facility is a safe location, which was built for the purpose of housing alien criminals.

Further, “Gitmo has been used for decades, including under Democrat presidents like Bill Clinton, to temporarily house migrants... This is not the detention facilities (where I served) for Al Qaeda; this is using specific facilities for migrants/illegals on other parts of the naval station.”

Third, the detention facility described by Hegseth at Gitmo could be especially cost-effective for the American taxpayer. After all, for 2024, Congress funded the daily detention of 41,500 noncitizens inside the U.S. at a cost of $3.4 billion, or $81,000 per prisoner, per year. The per detainee cost at Gitmo will be significantly less because it is a waypoint that houses aliens in open-air facilities in the subtropical environment.

The 30,000 detained aliens is only a drop in the bucket. However, it is a great start in a long-term effort to recover our sovereignty.

We should applaud President Trump’s aggressive efforts to remove criminal aliens. Using Gitmo as a temporary holding area for the most violent, pending their repatriation with their home country, is a win-win for concerned Americans. And significantly, this action will take a bite out of our ongoing crime epidemic and is the right move for American taxpayers. Kudos to the Trump administration.

Robert Maginnis is a retired US Army officer and the author of a dozen books to include the just released Preparing for World War III: A Global Conflict That Redefines Tomorrow. He has also twice visited the detention camps at Gitmo.

Image: Joint Task Force Guantanamo

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