“Today I’m … signing an executive order to instruct the Departments of Defence and Homeland Security to begin preparing the 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay,” Trump said at the White House on Wednesday (local time).

Trump made the shock announcement as he signed a bill allowing the pre-trial detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft and violent crime — named after a US student killed by a Venezuelan immigrant.

Donald Trump has signed the Laken Riley Act, which will allow the pre-trial detention of undocumented migrants charged with theft and violent crime. Source: AAP, SIPA USA / Jim Lo Scalzo

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel has sharply rebuked Trump’s plans for Guantanamo Bay.

“In an act of brutality, the new US government announces imprisonment at the Guantanamo naval base, located in illegally occupied Cuban territory,” Díaz-Canel wrote on X, adding the migrants would be held near facilities he said the US had used for “torture and illegal detention”.

However, the facility for migrants is separate from the detention centre on the base.

The International Refugee Assistance Project said in a 2024 report that detainees described unsanitary conditions, families with young children housed together with single adults, a lack of access to confidential phone calls, and the absence of educational services for children.