The dire situation of deported immigrants at Guantanamo

Ninaj Raoul has certain images etched in her mind from her trips to the US naval base at Guantanamo.

Raoul, a co-founder and executive director of Haitian Women for Haitian Refugees, a Brooklyn-based immigrant rights group, served as an interpreter for Haitian refugees held at Guantanamo in the early 1990s.

During her many visits there, she recalls that the base was always hot and there were no trees nearby. Some detainees were held with their children. There was little privacy except what people could get by hanging sheets between beds.

The camp was full of rats, the air was full of flies, and the prisoners got wet even inside the tents when it rained.

Iguanas roamed the grounds, along with cat-sized rodents called banana rats.

Guantanamo is located on the southeastern coast of Cuba; Guantanamo was the site where the US military first arrived during the Spanish-American War in 1898.

Now, what the US government wants to show through videos and photos posted on social media (of raids on homes and workplaces, as well as the detention of migrants) is the humiliation of migrants.

Ten Venezuelan migrants were flown to Guantanamo on a military plane from El Paso, Texas, on February 4, shackled and bound. Another 168 Venezuelan migrants were transferred to the base in the following weeks.

According to the New York Times, at least 20 planes transported about 270 migrants from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in El Paso to Guantanamo between February 4 and March 7. The first 178 were Venezuelans.

Many aspects of the operation (the detention and deportation of migrants to Guantanamo) have not been made public.

The US military has said that more than 1,000 security and civilian personnel, including soldiers, sailors and Marines, ICE agents, contractors and Coast Guard members, have been assigned to the Guantanamo Bay operation. The operation has reportedly cost about $16 million so far.

Human rights activists recently sued the Trump administration to block the transfer of 10 immigrants detained in the United States to Guantanamo Bay, and presented statements from those held there, who said they were held in appalling conditions and were treated inhumanely.

In response, U.S. Justice Department lawyers argued that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has broad authority to detain immigrants with final deportation orders at Guantanamo Bay.

U.S. immigration and military officials have said in written testimony that Guantanamo Bay detainees are treated with dignity and respect.

Trump has said he will send people he deems criminal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, but human rights activists say many of the detainees transferred to the facility have no criminal record.