United States President Donald Trump recently signed the the Lanken Riley Act into law, which will require the Secretary of Homeland Security to take custody of any illegal aliens who have been charged in the U.S. with theft and for other purposes.
Trump said at the White House that the U.S. will use a detention centre in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to hold tens of thousands of the “worst alien criminals”.
“Some of them are so bad that we don’t even trust the countries to hold them because we don’t want them coming back, so we’re gonna send ’em out to Guantanamo,” Trump said.
Alongside signing the act, Trump also expanded the Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity.
The law is named after Lanken Riley, a 22-year-old nursing student, who was murdered by Jose Antonio Ibarra on 22 February 2024.
Trump and other Republicans blamed former president Joe Biden for her death as Ibarra had been arrested for illegal entry in September 2022.
“It’s a tremendous tribute to your daughter what’s taking place today, that’s all I can say. It’s so sad we have to be doing it,” Trump said at the White House, where Lanken’s family was present.
“Under the cruel policies of the last Administration instead of being deported as he should have been, he was released into the United States.”
Cuba President, Miguel Díaz-Canel, said on X that the decision to send the illegal aliens to Guantanamo was an “act of brutality”.
“The new US government announces the imprisonment at the Guantanamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory #Cuba , of thousands of migrants that it forcibly expels, and will place them next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention,” he said.
The act was opposed by most democrats as they argued that it would strip due process for the rights of migrants, including minors or recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program.
“In this bill, if a person is so much as accused of a crime if someone wants to point a finger and accuse someone of shoplifting, they would be rounded up and put into a private detention camp and sent out for deportation without a day in court,” New York Democrat, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez said.
However, there are other democrats in favour of the act, including Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
“Anyone who commits a crime should be held accountable. That's why I voted to pass the Laken Riley Act,” she said.
In response to the bill being signed, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thanked Trump.
“This law restores commonsense to our broken immigration system. Under President Trump, violent criminals and vicious gang members will no longer be released into American communities,” she said.