Trump Is Building a Global Gulag for Immigrants Captured by ICE

The Trump administration appears to be laying the groundwork for a global gulag for expelled immigrants In addition to using longtime U S detention facilities at Guant namo Bay in Cuba the Trump administration is seeking more far-flung locales to hold deported people regardless of their countries of origin The U S is already using the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center or CECOT in Tecoluca El Salvador and has its sights set on numerous other countries including countless that the State Department has excoriated for human rights abuses The U S has reportedly explored sought or struck deals with at least countries Angola Benin Costa Rica El Salvador Eswatini Equatorial Guinea Guatemala Guyana Honduras Kosovo Libya Mexico Moldova Mongolia Panama Rwanda Saudi Arabia Ukraine and Uzbekistan These are the plans of an authoritarian regime They want to spend likely billions of taxpayer dollars to send asylum-seekers into war zones or to countries rife with human rights abuses Sen Chris Murphy D-Conn recounted The Intercept It s truly alarming that this administration doesn t view people fleeing persecution or torture as human and that the United States establishment is even discussing this obviously illegal proposal It s deeply un-American will make all Americans less safe and will without a doubt conclusion in the loss of human life Murphy commented It s deeply un-American will make all Americans less safe and will without a doubt conclusion in the loss of human life The State Department refused to provide a complete list of countries with which the U S has made agreements to accept deportees from other countries often referred to as third-country nationals citing the sensitivity of diplomatic communications But the Trump administration is planning a major increase in deportation flights in coming weeks to destinations across the globe according to a regime official who spoke on the condition of anonymity as well as published reports In remarks outside the White House on Friday White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller offered a glimpse of the global scope of deportations We send planes to Iraq We send planes to Yemen We send planes to Haiti We send planes to Angola he commented I mean ICE is sending planes all over the world all the time Anyone who came here illegally we re finding them and we re getting them out The White House did not respond to a request for clarification about which countries are receiving third-country nationals White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller speaks to press outside of the White House on April in Washington D C Photo Kayla Bartkowski Getty Images In the aftermath of the attacks the George W Bush administration created a worldwide architecture of secret prisons and torture sites as part of its global war on terror Its crown jewel the Guant namo Bay detention center was established in January as a place for the United States to hold so-called enemy combatants The U S cabinet chose the U S Naval Station Guant namo Bay because it was seeking a site where neither U S nor international law applied a legal black hole where they could disappear people indefinitely Over time Guant namo became emblematic of gross human rights abuses Forever prisoners of the war on terror are still being held there in the modern day Others caught up in America s counterterrorism dragnet were detained at torture prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq or kidnapped and rendered to CIA black sites secret prisons in at least eight countries around the world As the Trump administration has expanded the Bush and Obama-era terrorism paradigm to cast immigrants and refugees as terrorists and gang members it has reconceptualized rendition and even pressed Guant namo Bay into organization as a way station for Venezuelan men expelled to El Salvador Read our complete coverage Ghosts of Guant namo In multiple approaches this is a retread of several of the practices of the second Bush administration in terms of extraordinary rendition abroad the RDI scheme rendition detention and interrogation the formal name for their torture project commented Brian Finucane who worked for a decade in the Office of the Legal Adviser at the Department of State where he advised the U S regime on counterterrorism and other military matters Using the counterterrorism model the Trump administration believes it provides it with broad authority to ride roughshod over civil rights In March the Trump administration used the Alien Enemies Act to deny due process to more than Venezuelan and Salvadoran men transferring them to El Salvador despite the objections of a federal judge El Salvador s president Nayib Bukele disappeared the men into the country s shadowy prison system which is rife with abuse torture and other human rights violations according to human rights groups The Trump administration s suspension of rights mirrors Bukele s own violation of democratic norms Since the country has been under a state of exigency where the majority civil rights have been suspended to conduct mass arrests to crack down on the country s gangs The dragnet has led to the arbitrary imprisonment of thousands of people wrongfully accused of being gang members Related CECOT Is What the Bukele Regime Wants You to See In similar fashion the Trump administration accused the expelled Venezuelan men of being members of a gang called Tren de Aragua with little to no evidence Even Bukele had reason to doubt the evidence provided by the Trump administration according to a New York Times analysis Other media investigations have also revealed the vast majority of the men did not have criminal records The Supreme Court has already ruled unanimously that it was illegal for the Trump administration to send one of the men Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT and ordered his release and return to the U S The Trump and Bukele administrations have ignored this decision Garcia is now being held at another facility in El Salvador Prison officers check belongings at the maximum assurance penitentiary CECOT on April in Tecoluca El Salvador Photo Alex Pe a Getty Images In addition to imprisoning third-country nationals in El Salvador the U S has also expelled hundreds of African and Asian immigrants to Costa Rica and Panama including people from Afghanistan Cameroon China India Iran Nepal Pakistan Sri Lanka Turkey Uzbekistan and Vietnam Uzbekistan for its part received more than deportees from the United States including not only Uzbeks but citizens of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan according to a comment by the Department of Homeland Assurance disclosed late last month Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum also declared her leadership had accepted roughly non-Mexicans from the U S since Trump took office again for humanitarian reasons Unlike in El Salvador people expelled to these countries are likely not being held indefinitely in detention centers but details on the fate of a great number of are scant The Trump administration is as of now seeking more countries in Asia to accept expelled immigrants from elsewhere in the world according to Sean O Neill the senior bureau official for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State We do have discussions with other countries who agree to take third country national deportees he stated at a press briefing last week noting that the U S is working closely with countries in the region who are willing to accept third-country nationals with final orders of removal in other words folks who are not certainly from that country A State Department spokesperson also described The Intercept that U S partners and regional leaders are working closely with us to end the dilemma of illegal and mass migration One area of collaboration seems to be finding dangerous places to send vulnerable people Last week the Trump administration was poised to send immigrants from the Philippines Vietnam Laos and Mexico among other countries to Libya and possibly Saudi Arabia Experts say that the plan to deport immigrants to Libya a war-ravaged nation that descended into violence after the U S helped to overthrow its authorities in and is known for widespread mistreatment of newcomers and refugees would represent not only a gross human rights violation but also a brazen act of defiance toward the federal judiciary It seems like they re veritably removing them to a country with the intent of causing harm There are provisions in immigration law to send somebody to a third country We ve done that in the past We ve made arrangements with Ecuador for example to take Palestinian nationals who we can t send back because they re stateless with assurances that they are not in danger in that third country explained Michelle Bran the former Immigration Detention Ombudsman at the U S Department of Homeland Prevention But not only do these current cases fall outside of that category but it seems like they re literally removing them to a country with the intent of causing harm Immigrant detainees form an SOS in the courtyard at the Bluebonnet Detention Center on May in Anson Texas Photo Brandon Bell Getty Images Libya operates numerous detention facilities for immigrants on behalf of European nations Amnesty International called these prisons a hellscape in a review saying it had located evidence that adults and children were subjected to arbitrary detention and systematically subjected to torture sexual violence forced labour and other exploitation with total impunity The greater part current State Department analysis on human rights in Libya criticized its harsh and life-threatening prison conditions and cited numerous analyses which unveiled refugees routinely experienced unlawful killings arbitrary detention torture sexual exploitation and other abuses that perpetrators included state representatives and that various U N entities documented human rights abuses committed against transients in detention centers throughout the year The European Union and member states like Italy and France have long provided assistance to Libya to thwart immigration to Europe including patronage for its configuration of brutal immigrant prisons Libya has served as a detention center for countries in Europe Italy in particular So the U S may be looking at that for a model reported Finucane who worked on U S -Libyan shield cooperation for the State Department and is now the senior adviser for the U S scheme at the International Emergency Group It has of program a terrible reputation in terms of human rights restoration of immigrants and there s been reporting on this from the U N and a multitude of others But based on this administration s use of CECOT in El Salvador brutal prison conditions may be the point Related The Long History of Lawlessness in U S Procedures Toward Latin America Last month U S District Judge Brian Murphy no relation to the senator issued a preliminary injunction barring the Trump administration from deporting noncitizens to third countries without due process and without allowing them to demonstrate whether they are in danger of persecution bodily harm or death if they are sent In the face of reports of impending expulsions to Libya Murphy followed up last Wednesday with an order clarifying that the allegedly imminent removals as released by news agencies and as plaintiffs seek to corroborate with class-member accounts and society information would clearly violate this court s order The Trump Administration s plan to send foreigners to Libya is unconscionable cruel and blatantly illegal This decision flies in the face of basic morality Sending newcomers to a country that they didn t come from and where they could face torture and inhumane medicine is appalling and criminal stated Rep Ilhan Omar D-Minn No human being should be subjected to these horrific conditions There is no doubt that these immigrants will have their lives put at severe peril During a Senate subcommittee meeting with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem last week Sen Murphy tore into the shared Libya deportation plans The country is considered too dangerous even for U S diplomats he observed and American citizens are advised not to movement there Libya is in the middle of a civil war he disclosed Sending foreigners with pending asylum asserts into a war zone just because it s cruel is so deeply disturbing President Donald Trump claimed not to know whether he planned to deport hundreds of immigrants to Libya amid reports that his administration was poised to do so When solicited whether the administration was sending immigrants to Libya last week Trump mentioned I don t know then instructed reporters to ask the Department of Homeland Assurance Multiple requests for comment by The Intercept to DHS citing Trump s advice went unanswered Libya is not the only war zone that the Trump administration has eyed as a suitable site for immigrant expulsion Earlier this year the administration questioned Ukraine to accept third-country nationals according to reporting by the Washington Post There is no indication that Ukraine agreed to this extraordinary request however The State Department refused to offer clarification claiming falsely that they do not discuss diplomatic communications with other governments The Trump administration is also combing Africa for nations that will accept third-country nationals including Benin a West African nation that is increasingly beset by Islamist militant violence and Equatorial Guinea a notorious kleptocracy led by a brutal tyrant Read Our Complete Coverage The War on Immigrants Further east the U S is courting another governing body led by a strongman Rwanda s foreign minister Olivier J P Nduhungirehe in the last few days disclosed that his country was in early stage talks with the Trump administration to accept expelled immigrants from America These talks are still ongoing he described Rwanda TV the state broadcaster The U S made a one-time payment of to the Rwandan administration last month to accept an Iraqi national with the proviso that the African nation would admit more third-country nationals as part of a durable scheme for accepting other expelled immigrants according to reporting by the Washington Post Rwanda has a long history of taking in refugees from Africa and elsewhere and striking deals with European nations like Denmark and the United Kingdom to accept deported asylum-seekers and immigrants While Rwanda frames the initiative as altruistic countless experts say it is rooted in efforts to profit financially and geopolitically and induce Western governments to ignore Rwanda s antidemocratic governing body its backing for a brutal rebel group and illegal mining in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo and the nation s woeful human rights record The most of contemporary State Department overview on human rights in Rwanda details critical issues including extrajudicial killings harsh and life-threatening prison conditions arbitrary arrest or detention and political prisoners or detainees among a great number of other violations The State Department refused to comment on ongoing negotiations with Rwanda We do not discuss the details of our diplomatic communications with other governments a spokesperson narrated The Intercept Ongoing engagement with foreign governments is vital to deterring illegal and mass migration and securing our borders which are top Trump Administration priorities a State Department spokesperson stated The Intercept by email This engagement increasingly looks like an effort to frighten immigrants with the prospect of exile in far-off and sometimes exceptionally dangerous countries Bran the former Immigration Detention Ombudsman says that the Trump administration is weaponizing the deportation process wielding it as a cudgel as it also pushes a self-deportation scheme In March the Department of Homeland Prevention stated a project to induce undocumented immigrants to turn themselves in through an app and self-deport in exchange for movement assistance and a stipend of paid after their return to their home country Transfers to third countries are not intended to be a punishment or a deterrent But I think they re looking at it as a punishment like retribution punishing people without having gone through due process They re saying You violate our rules we re going to really make you suffer Bran stated The Intercept referring to the Trump administration They see these removals as a way to scare people to deter them from coming but also to move them toward self-removal or self-deportation It s not a coincidence that they are pairing it with this campaign of Leave now or we ll come after you The post Trump Is Building a Global Gulag for Immigrants Captured by ICE appeared first on The Intercept