President Donald Trump, who made the deportation of immigrants a central part of his campaign and presidency, said the U.S. will use a detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to hold tens of thousands of the "worst criminal aliens."
"We're going to send them out to Guantánamo," the Republican said at the signing of the Laken Riley Act last month.
President Donald Trump pauses while speaking Jan. 29 before signing the Laken Riley Act in the East Room of the White House in Washington.
He later signed a memorandum and said he'd direct federal officials to get facilities ready to receive criminal immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Border czar Tom Homan said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would run the facility.
Here's a look at the U.S. naval base, widely known as "Gitmo," and its history.
How is the base used?
While the U.S. naval base in Cuba is best known for the suspects brought in after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, it has a small, separate facility used to hold migrants.
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The Migrant Operations Center is used for people intercepted trying to illegally reach the U.S. by boat. Most are from Haiti and Cuba.
The center takes up a tiny part of the base, includes just a handful of buildings and has nowhere near the capacity to house the 30,000 people Trump said could be sent there.
An Army soldier, right, and a Marine stand June 6, 2018, in front of the gates that separate the Cuban side from the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.
"We're just going to expand upon that existing migrant center," Homan told reporters.
The migrant detention center operates separately from the military's detention center and courtrooms for foreigners detained under President George W. Bush during what that administration called its "war on terror." That facility houses 15 detainees, down from its peak of nearly 800.
Who will be held there?
The migrant detention facilities at Guantánamo will be used for "the worst of the worst," administration officials said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Homan both used that phrase.
The White House said the expanded facility would "provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to address attendant immigration enforcement needs."
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, left, and White House border czar Tom Homan speak with reporters Jan. 29 at the White House in Washington.
An administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said it would house "dangerous criminals" and people who are "hard to deport." A number of countries refuse to accept some immigrants the U.S. tries to deport.
Though Trump often speaks of dangers from the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, peer-reviewed academic studies generally found no link between immigration and violent crime.
What else is known?
Not much. The nonprofit International Refugee Assistance Project said in a report last year that people are held in "prison-like" conditions in the Migrant Operations Center, "trapped in a punitive system" indefinitely with no accountability for the officials running it.
Deepa Alagesan, a senior supervising attorney with the group, said Wednesday they believed it is used to hold a small number of people — "in the double digits," she estimated.
The prospect of using it for far more immigrants is "definitely a scary prospect," she said.
Are space, funds sufficient?
Trump vowed to deport millions of people living illegally in the U.S., but the current Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget only has enough funds to detain about 41,000 people.
ICE detains immigrants at its processing centers and privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and jails. It has no facilities geared toward the detention of families, who account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.
During Trump's first term, he authorized the use of military bases to detain migrant children. In 2014, then-President Barack Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers.
U.S. military bases were used since the 1970s to accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam, Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
A building in Cuba, bearing the Spanish message "Republic of Cuba. Free American Territory," is seen June 6, 2018, behind a gate marking the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
What is some of the reaction?
The decision to send immigrants to Guantánamo "should horrify us all," said a legal advocacy group that since the Sept. 11 attacks represented dozens of men detained at the base.
Trump's order "sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports," said Vince Warren, the executive director of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
The U.S. leased Guantánamo from Cuba for more than a century. Cuba opposes the lease and typically rejects the nominal U.S. rent payments.
Cuban officials criticized the news, with President Miguel DÃaz-Canel deeming the decision "an act of brutality" and describing the base as "located in illegally occupied #Cuba territory."
