Trump urged to rule out ‘unlawful’ Cuba takeover and stop using Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention

More than 30 members of Congress have urged Donald Trump’s top officials to end the use of Guantánamo Bay naval base for immigrant detention and rule out any plans for military action on Cuba.

In the letter to the secretaries of defense, state and homeland security on Wednesday morning, reviewed by the Guardian, Democratic lawmakers led by Delia Ramirez, a representative from Illinois, linked a rise in migration from the island nation to the heightening US aggression on Cuba.

The US president has repeatedly mused about taking over Cuba, as his administration escalates pressure on the country. The US imposed additional sanctions last week and has repeatedly expressed a desire for potential military intervention to depose its government.

A US fuel blockade on Cuba, ordered by Trump earlier this year, has contributed to a grave humanitarian crisis on the island.

Trump has expressed an interest in regime change in Cuba after January’s US Delta Force operation to abduct president Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. “Cuba is next, by the way,” the US president said in March.

In their letter, however, the members of Congress warned any military action on the island could potentially destabilize the island further, driving up migration from the island to the US.

“Such action would be unlawful, deeply destabilizing, and catastrophic for the Cuban population, while further increasing displacement, exacerbating mass suffering, and undermining US interests in the region,” they wrote. “It must be unequivocally rejected.”

The lawmakers demanded the administration stop the use of Guantánamo Bay for migrant detention; lift sanctions contributing to Cuba’s humanitarian crisis; and abandon reported plans for US military action.

“US policies have deliberately targeted Cuban civilians and contributed to their displacement as well as their deaths,” the members of Congress write. “Planning for their detention at Guantánamo is not a response to migration – it is an attempt to contain the consequences of the exact policies that are driving it.”

The departments of defense, state and homeland security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawmakers sent their letter just one month after a group of human rights organizations decryied the administration’s aggression on Cuba and its desire to establish a migrant “camp” for fleeing Cubans at the US base on Guantánamo Bay.

In March, a top defense department official told Congress that in case of a “humanitarian crisis” in Cuba, the Pentagon would “set up a camp” at the Guantánamo Bay US base to “deal with” migrants. The defense official said they would be assisting the Department of Homeland Security in migrant detention.

“Such a proposal is deeply alarming and unacceptable,” the representatives wrote. “It raises serious concerns about the use of a US military facility with a well-documented record of abuse, while externalizing the consequences of US policy toward Cuba by detaining displaced people rather than addressing the conditions driving migration.”

The Guantánamo Bay base is mostly known for its notorious and secretive military prison for detainees in the so-called war on terror follow the 2001 terrorist attacks on the US on September 11.

The Trump administration began escalating its use of Guantánamo for migrant detention practices last year after signing an executive order to expand detention operations there. Some immigrants from the US were flown to Guantánamo and held inside the facility used during the so-called war on terror, while others were held at a separate migrant detention facility.

The establishment of a migrant or refugee camp, as the defense official mentioned, would not be new. In the 1990s, Guantánamo was used to detain tens of thousands of migrants and refugees from the Caribbean, primarily from Haiti and later Cuba. That migrant camp was shut down after widespread outcry related to its deplorable conditions.

“In light of this record, the proposal to use Guantánamo to detain Cuban migrants is particularly egregious,” the representatives wrote. “It would extend a well-documented pattern of mistreatment toward a population whose displacement is driven significantly by US policy.”