Trump urged to rule out ‘unlawful’ Cuba takeover and stop using Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention

Key Points:

• Over 30 Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Delia Ramirez, have urged Trump’s top officials to end immigrant detention at Guantánamo Bay and reject any US military action against Cuba, citing escalating US aggression as a driver of increased migration from the island.
• The lawmakers condemned US policies, including sanctions and a fuel blockade, for worsening Cuba’s humanitarian crisis and warned that military intervention would destabilize the region, exacerbate suffering, and increase displacement.
• They criticized plans to use Guantánamo Bay as a migrant detention center, highlighting its history of abuse and arguing that detaining migrants there merely contains the consequences of harmful US policies rather than addressing root causes of migration.
• The letter follows a March defense department statement about potentially establishing a migrant camp at Guantánamo in response to a Cuban humanitarian crisis, a proposal the representatives called “deeply alarming and unacceptable.”
• Guantánamo Bay’s use for migrant detention escalated under Trump, with some immigrants flown there, reviving concerns due to the base’s notorious past as a military prison and previous migrant camps with deplorable conditions in the 1990s.