The same administration that refused to admit the border crisis was an actual crisis reportedly considered turning Guantanamo Bay into a migrant holding facility amid another migrant surge.
As the Biden administration struggles to deal with the many thousands of Haitian and Central American migrants flooding Texas’s southern border, officials posted a government listing looking for a private contractor to oversee a migrant detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, according to Axios.
Right now, nearly 4,000 migrants seeking access to the United States are camped out under a bridge in Del Rio in squalid conditions. Border Patrol agents have been working to transfer the migrants eligible for asylum to various detention facilities, but the majority of these centers are already overwhelmed and understaffed. So, the administration has turned to other possible options, including, apparently, a new migrant facility in a military prison.
The listing, quietly posted by the Department of Homeland Security on Sept. 17, said the temporary housing facility they were looking to build would hold up to 400 migrants during a “surge event.” At least 10% of the staffers would have to be fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole, the ad noted.
A DHS spokesperson has since denied that the agency plans to send Haitian migrants detained at the southern border to a holding facility in Guantanamo Bay. Regardless, the very fact that administration officials might have been considering doing so proves they are running out of solutions for what has become a very serious problem. Hundreds of thousands of migrants are trying to cross the border every single month, and the surges show no sign of slowing down.
So why does the Biden administration continue to act as if nothing is wrong? DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tried to claim this week that the border is “no less secure” than it was before President Joe Biden took office. This is obviously not true. By the time former President Donald Trump left office, control of illegal immigration was in much better shape than it had been in a long time. Biden’s promises of leniency and his decisions to roll back Trump-era restrictions are what turned these immigration surges into a full-blown humanitarian and security crisis.
The Biden administration’s continued attempts to pretend like the border crisis isn’t all that bad make no sense. Officials clearly know just how serious this situation has become — why else would they have turned to Guantanamo Bay as a possible migrant holding site? It would be better for the administration to acknowledge the severity of the crisis and explain that it requires drastic action. Because right now, Biden’s team appears to have no idea what it’s doing.
