The head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is signaling support for a White House plan to begin housing migrants at Guantánamo Bay.
Appearing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem defended President Donald Trump's initiative, saying migrants held at the detention center will still have the same rights and access to attorneys as they would in the U.S.
"Due process will be followed," Noem said. "And having facilities at Guantánamo Bay will be an asset to us and the fact that we'll have the capacity to continue to do there what we've always done. We've always had a presence of illegal immigrants there that have been detained, we're just building out some capacities."
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Noem also reiterated President Trump's claim that Guantánamo Bay will only be used to hold the "worst criminal" migrants.
"This president has said that it will hold the worst of the worst, that we are going after those bad actors," she said. "This last week I was in New York City. We were going after people that had warrants out for their arrests on murders and rapes, assaults, gun purchases, drug trafficking. ...These are the types of individuals that we are targeting, we're removing from communities, and that could end up having a stay at Guantánamo Bay before they are returned home to their countries."
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President Trump, last week, signed a memorandum directing the opening of Guantánamo Bay to hold up to 30,000 migrants who are living illegally in the U.S. The White House said the detention center would be run by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Guantánamo Bay, which is located in southeastern Cuba, has historically been used by the U.S. government to house suspected terrorists. However, the detention center has also been the focus of controversy in the past over the alleged mistreatment of detainees — including claims of abuse and torture.
