US flying detained migrants to Gitmo

The United States is starting to fly detained migrants to America's notorious Guantanamo military base in Cuba as part of President Donald Trump's crackdown on illegal migration, officials said Tuesday.

Guantanamo is primarily known as a controversial detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but the base also has a history of being used to hold migrants, and Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person "migrant facility" there.

"Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business.

A US defense official told AFP Tuesday afternoon that there is a "flight scheduled today to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay with about a dozen high-threat illegal aliens."

"They will be housed in the detention facility... but will not be co-located with high-value detainees currently at the detention facility," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.

The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.

The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed.

The conditions there have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of "unparalleled notoriety." AFP