Mexico will not allow the U.S. government to send Mexican migrants to the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, detention camp, Mexico’s foreign minister said on Tuesday.
Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente said Mexico would rather directly receive the migrants.
The Mexican government sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. embassy in Mexico to explain its position.
This comes after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Tuesday that the Trump administration has begun flying detained illegal migrants from the U.S. to Guantánamo Bay, although she did not specify the nationalities of the people on those flights.
US BEGINS FLYING MIGRANTS TO GUANTANAMO BAY
“I can also confirm that today the first flights from the United States to Guantánamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway,” Leavitt said.
“And so President Trump, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem are already delivering on this promise to utilize that capacity at Gitmo for illegal criminals who have broken our nation’s immigration laws and then have further committed heinous crimes against lawful American citizens here at home,” she continued.
U.S. President Donald Trump has promised to expand the detention camp to hold up to 30,000 “criminal illegal aliens.” The U.S. military base has been criticized around the world for its inhumane abuse and torture of detainees, including in interrogation tactics.
One flight from Fort Bliss to Guantánamo Bay has roughly a dozen migrants on board, according to the Pentagon. An additional flight left the U.S. on Monday.
The migrants will be held in the detention camp that was set up for detainees in the aftermath of 9/11. The migrants will be separated from the 15 detainees who were already there, including planners in the 2001 terrorist attack.
EL SALVADOR AGREES TO ACCEPT US DEPORTEES OF ANY NATIONALITY FOLLOWING MEETING WITH RUBIO
Last week, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel called Trump’s effort to send 30,000 migrants to Guantánamo an “act of brutality.”
“In an act of brutality, the new US government announces the imprisonment at the Guantánamo Naval Base, located in illegally occupied territory [of 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 in a translated post on X.
Reuters contributed to this report.
