The Trump administration has considered jailing migrant children at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, the New York Times reports, in a proposal that apparently “has not gained traction, perhaps because of the optics of housing young people adjacent to terrorism suspects.” Sure, because it’s the optics, not the overseas jailing of children escaping violence, that’s the issue here.
Officials discussed the plan earlier this year in their effort to figure out how to jail more people in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. Congress set a limit to how many immigrants ICE can detain—over 45,200—but ICE commonly defies Congress, goes beyond that number, and just figures out the money part later. “ICE is currently housing 50,223 migrants,” the New York Times continued, “one of the highest numbers on record.”
Guantanamo, which jailed thousands of asylum-seekers in the past under direction of Attorney General Bill Barr, came up in the discussions as a way for an unleashed ICE to continue boosting its numbers. “While there were no ‘immediate’ plans to house migrant children at Guantánamo Bay, the Defense Department is attempting to identify military bases that might be used for that purpose, a department spokesman, Tom Crosson, said on Monday.”
Where could this idea have come from? In what’s surely just a coincidence, anti-immigrant leader Mark Krikorian recently tweeted, “Why not Guantanamo? It's a big place,” in response to another report on the administration looking for more space to jail kids. Stephen Miller, the White House aide and white supremacist behind the administration’s most hateful policies, has ties to Krikorian’s group, once saying “that speaking with the organization’s research director was ‘one of the great pleasures of my professional life.’”
Truthfully, immigrant and human rights activists have already criticized existing prison camps in the U.S. as “Gitmo for kids,” in particular the now-closed prison camp for migrant kids in Tornillo, Texas. But as that one was shut down earlier this year, another one in Homestead, Florida, rose in its place. When three congressional members recently tried to visit Homestead to conduct their oversight responsibilities, they were blocked, in violation of law.
There are more humane alternatives to detention, like the Obama-era Family Case Management Program. “Instead of keeping children in detention centers with their parents, families in certain cities were released and monitored by social workers, who helped them find lawyers, housing, and transportation, and made sure they attended their court hearings.” Ninety-nine percent of participants, Vox reported, showed up to their court hearings. The Trump administration shut down the program in 2017.
