The United States will begin transferring migrants to a detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within 30 days. This was reported on Friday by The Washington Post and "Reuters", citing Special Representative for Immigration and Border Protection Tom Homan.
"We hope to start moving people there within 30 days," Homan said.
Homan said he plans to travel to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay in the coming weeks to oversee the rapid construction of the facility.
Although Trump has said the facility will hold up to 30,000 migrants, Homan said they will likely start with a small number.
Earlier this week, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's statement that "the worst" illegal immigrants will be detained at Guantanamo, Cuba, calling it an "act of brutality".
In an article in X, Diaz-Canel called it an "act of brutality" the imprisonment of thousands of migrants near "well-known torture and illegal detention" prisons.
Diaz-Canel did not fail to recall that Guantanamo continues to be "illegally occupied Cuban territory".
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said in a separate post that the US decision to detain illegal immigrants at Guantanamo demonstrates "contempt for the human condition and international law".
Trump officially signed a memorandum calling for the expansion of the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
The order directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to expand the center "to its full capacity to provide additional space for the detention of high-priority aliens who are criminals and are illegally present in the United States.".
That would be "addresses the accompanying immigration enforcement needs" identified by the two agencies.
Guantanamo Bay will house up to 30,000 migrants.
The U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, already houses a migrant facility - separate from the U.S. high-security prison for foreign terrorism suspects - that has been used at times for decades, including to house Haitians and Cubans captured at sea.
But moving tens of thousands of migrants to the base would once again expand the Pentagon's role in Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration.
The Guantanamo Bay detention center was established in 2002 by then-U.S. President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States to hold suspected foreign fighters. There are currently 15 detainees remaining in the prison.
But the migrant facility is separate from the detention center on the base.