Noem confident in legality of housing migrants at Guantánamo Bay

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she’s confident that steps the government is taking to deport certain migrants from the U.S. mainland to Guantánamo Bay are legal.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Dana Bash acknowledged that Guantánamo Bay has been used in the past to house deported migrants but said she does not believe the prison has housed migrants who were detained on U.S. soil after crossing the border illegally.

Asked if she’s confident she has the legal authority to do so, Noem said, “I am, and the President's comfortable with that, and his legal scholars are.”

“And obviously there'll be people that will be critics of that, but we are standing up the operations, believing we have all legal right and authority to do so, and that facility has been used for migrants in the past,” Noem said.

“The direction that they're flowing, and the agreements that we have with their home countries, will continue to keep that population changing,” she continued.

The president in late January signed a memo directing the Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantánamo Bay, a facility in Cuba that has been used to house military prisoners, including several Al Qaeda operatives linked to the 9/11 attacks.

The order did not outline any specific timeline for establishing the facility, but U.S. troops arrived at the base earlier this month to provide support with construction of tents near an existing migration detention facility. And within a week of the executive order, the Pentagon confirmed that officials have flown 10 migrants described as “high-threat individuals” to the facility in Cuba.

On Sunday, Noem said “several planes” of migrants have arrived at the facility this past week.

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