In a move that is more publicity stunt than workable policy, President Donald Trump has ordered his administration to prepare to house tens of thousands of “criminal aliens” at the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay.
“We have 30,000 beds in Guantánamo to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people,” he said. “Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantánamo.”
He said the move would “double our capacity immediately,” adding that Guantánamo is a “tough place to get out of.”
Everything about this messaging is designed to evoke fear — of him, of his administration, of immigrants themselves.
“Everything about this messaging is designed to evoke fear.”
He has moved from talking about mass deportations to talking about mass imprisonments — a facility whose very name evokes the horrors of 9/11. Therefore, undocumented immigrants are treated as terrorists.
The American Immigration Council reports: “Immigrants — including undocumented immigrants — are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born. This is true at the national, state, county and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime.”
Trump has consistently labeled those who cross the southern border into the U.S. as rapists, thugs and murderers — a scare tactic not based anywhere in reality. Now, his MAGA followers are calling all undocumented immigrants — “illegal aliens,” in their book — criminals. They are “criminals” because they entered the U.S. without permission, even if they filed constitutionally allowed asylum claims.
An ICE agents arrests an immigrant in Georgia on Sunday. (Screencap from Atlanta First News)
Constant outrage
Trump has a habit of getting people to relate one thing he says to make a larger point. For example, he frequently claims migrant gangs are not really humans. They are “animals.” While he has not said all migrants are animals, the American capacity to draw conclusions from an isolated example turns into the idea that “all migrants are animals.” The tendency to universalize is almost inescapable when viewed emotionally.
The Trump machine produces emotion 24 hours a day. Americans are commanded to feel angry, slighted, unappreciated and resentful. From the White House, Trump parlays these feelings into government actions.
“Trump sees an illegal immigrant criminal at every bus stop.”
Trump sees an illegal immigrant criminal at every bus stop. He has instructed ICE to go into churches and schools — unlikely hangouts for criminals — to take prisoners. He has been doing this since he first likened Mexican immigrants as “murderers and rapists.”
Way back in 2015, he tweeted: “We must stop the crime and killing machine that is illegal immigration.”
At the inaugural prayer service, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde asked Trump to have mercy on immigrants. His snarky response: “She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA.”
Like a tape-recorded message stuck on repeat, Trump keeps repeating the same lies. In the face of overwhelming evidence that violent crime in the USA is down and the statistical proof that immigrants are less likely to commit murder than white Americans, Trump keeps repeating his lies, and his followers believe him.
Now, his plan to house detained immigrants at Guantanamo Bay’s U.S. Navy Base is another emotional effort to continually cast all migrants as criminals.
Ben Wittes, editor of the legal website Lawfare, told NPR: “The name Guantanamo Bay to America signals terrorist detention. So it elevates the status of what are really routine immigration enforcement actions into something like holding major terrorist figures that signals, ‘I’m going to bring back the big bad Guantanamo Bay for this.’”
Talking about the “criminal element” has a perverse sound since the former party of “law and order” has ignored the criminal acts against our nation on January 6 and pardoned the criminals of murder and mayhem. Now, brown people are the “criminals” needing rounding up and impounding.
The Statue of Liberty (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
A tale of two islands
In American history, two islands illustrate the better angels of our national soul that pull us toward freedom, equality and mutual respect versus the lower angels that pull us toward fear, anger and violence. Those two places are Ellis Island and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
America has an ideal mythology that equals that of the Greeks. A major part of our mythology is symbolized by the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island in New York Harbor.
More than a century ago, Ellis Island became the geographical metaphor for freedom. Thus Emma Lazarus penned the poem that gave written iconography to American ideals:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Ellis Island opened to receive immigrants on Jan. 1, 1892. An Irish family consisting of Annie Moore, a teenage girl, and her two younger brothers made history as the very first immigrants to be processed there. Over the next 62 years, more than 12 million immigrants arrived in the United States via Ellis Island.
In 1924, political nativists comprised of politicians and preachers (some of them Baptist fundamentalists) fanned the flames of nativism to demand restrictions on immigration. Lady Liberty’s light dimmed from shore to shore as a literary test, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Alien Contract Labor Law, quota laws and the National Origins Act stemmed the flow of newcomers.
The lamp of liberty was replaced with a sign at every America port: “No Trespassing. Violators Will Be Shot.”
As a result, Ellis Island faded in American memory but Lady Liberty still stood there as stark reminder of the angels of our better nature.
During World War II, Ellis Island became the opposite of her first purpose. Japanese, German and Italian nationals suspected of being enemy aliens were brought there to be interred.
This 1994 photo shows a US-run refugee camp with rows of tents housing Haitians applying for safe haven status at US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Photo by William F. Campbell/Getty Images)
Our national nightmare
If Ellis Island is our dream representing the better angels of our spirit, Guantanamo Bay is our national nightmare.
“If Ellis Island is our dream representing the better angels of our spirit, Guantanamo Bay is our national nightmare.”
The location takes its name from Guantánamo Province at the southeastern end of Cuba. This is the only military base the United States has in a communist country.
Located on Guantanamo is a high-security prison, “Gitmo,” that held terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It has become a notorious symbol of U.S. excesses during the “war on terror,” including the brutal mistreatment of prisoners and detention of suspects for two decades without charge.
Even though Trump’s proposed place to house immigrant detainees is on a different plot of land at the base, not at the terrorist prison, the name carries the same weight.
Unfortunately, this is not a new idea. Haitian refugees and Cuban asylum seekers were held at Guantanamo Bay by the Clinton administration. In 1994, as many as 45,000 migrants were held there. In 2005, the nonprofit Amnesty International called it the “gulag (of) our times.”
Vince Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, told NPR he knows “there haven’t been 30,000 beds (at the Guantanamo facility) in decades.”
“The facility is decrepit. It’s been falling apart. It’s in disrepair,” he said. “And, as a practical matter, the conditions that would be created if people went there would be so substandard that it would give people opportunities to file lawsuits around the conditions of their confinement while they’re being deported.”
The sheer numbers make this move unfeasible. About 1.4 million people in the United States are known to have deportation orders issued against them. An estimated 11 million people are living in the United States without legal status, according to a 2024 report by the Department of Homeland Security. ICE deported the largest number of people in a decade during fiscal year 2024, the last full fiscal year of Joe Biden’s presidency.
“With Trump, the mere threat is the point. As always, the cruelty is the point.”
There are not 30,000 “hardened criminals” who are illegal immigrants, but there are far more than 30,000 immigrants Trump says he will deport.
This is nothing more than a cruel publicity stunt. But with Trump, the mere threat is the point. As always, the cruelty is the point.
What history will we choose?
James Baldwin observed, “History …. does not refer merely to the past. … History is literally present in all that we do.”
America’s dream incarnated in Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty collides with America’s nightmare exposed in Guantanamo Bay and Gitmo prison.
One of my favorite songs is “Down There by the Train.” The lines that reach the deepest in my soul:
“There’s a golden moon that shines up through the mist
And I know that your name can be on that list
There’s no eye for an eye, there’s no tooth for a tooth
I saw Judas Iscariot carrying John Wilkes Booth.”
I want to add a single sentence: “I saw Martin King carrying Caesar Chavez.” I believe looking out of the window of every American there is an Ellis Island and a Gitmo. Elis is where we want to be. This is America’s dream.
It is time to come home to Ellis Island and all the freedom and liberty the Lady possesses in her heart.
Rodney W. Kennedy is a pastor and writer in New York state. He is the author of 11 books, including his latest, Dancing with Metaphors in the Pulpit.
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