Guantanamo

Slate -  Officially, the detention center in Guantanamo was a response to a problem of immigration enforcement, not security concerns. Like Ellis and Angel islands before it, the government’s idea was that by setting up a “processing facility” offshore it could properly analyze the legal case of each individual before affording them legal entry. This time around, there is no pretext.

Trump has consistently vilified migrants and equated them with criminals. His entire political rise is tethered to the idea that immigrants are invading the country and that only he can fix it. As Trump himself said in his statements to the press, the facility in Guantanamo is to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

The threat is so dire, apparently, that he plans to build a detention facility of unprecedented size in the American context. The Tule Lake Japanese internment camp, for example, had a capacity of around 18,000. If the Trump administration actually builds the detention camp in Guantanamo, it’ll double in size Auschwitz-Birkenau’s original design and be bigger than Dachau and Treblinka combined...

What’s critical is this: Guantanamo today carries a particular political valence. For some it is a symbol of government abuse, but for others it is the place where terrorists are held. Trump intends to build in Guantanamo purposely to reify the same message that propelled him to power: Immigrants are criminals and they are here to hurt you. But now Trump is going further: Some of these immigrants are not only criminals, they are equivalent to terrorists. Frighteningly, this move may also be Trump signaling an intent to strip undocumented immigrants of even more rights and treat them under similarly abusive conditions as recent Guantanamo Bay detainees have experienced.