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How Guantanamo Became a Black Hole
A history of imperialism and impunity, from Columbus to Trump
You may have missed it amidst the chaos of the first couple of weeks of the new Trump administration, but Guantanamo Bay is back in the news.
As part of his crusade against illegal immigration, the president announced that the infamous naval base will be the destination for migrants who Trump wants to remove from American communities but won’t deport to their countries of origin. Trump explained the move by saying that “some of them are so bad, we don’t even trust other countries to hold them, and we don’t want them coming back, so we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo.”
If Trump follows through on his announcement, Guantanamo will become a massive detention facility, housing up to 30,000 people in a state of legal limbo. This is the president’s first move in a campaign (which could cost as much as $300 billion) to build detention facilities to house immigrants in facilities all over the country.
But Guantanamo is, as Ruth Bader Ginsburg once said, a different “animal, there is no other like it.” This weird and secretive place has often operated on the fringes of American and international law, far from the view of the American public. It’s an avatar of American imperialism and impunity, a place where…
