President Joe Biden‘s administration is seeking a private contractor for the Homeland Security Department to oversee a migrant detention facility at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay.
The government listing made headlines on Wednesday amid a surge of mostly Haitian migrants at the southern border in Del Rio, Texas, but a spokesperson for DHS denies they will be sent to Guantanamo, where migrants detained at sea have been housed in the past.
The agency “is not and will not send Haitian nationals being encountered at the southwest border to the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay,” the representative said in an email to the Washington Examiner.
The listing, originally posted last week, says DHS is seeking a private contractor to “be responsible to maintain on site the necessary equipment to erect temporary housing facilities for populations that exceed 120 and up to 400 migrants in a surge event.”
HAITIAN MIGRANTS IN CUSTODY HAVE ‘HIJACKED’ MULTIPLE BUSES
NEW: Current look at the migrant camp under the international bridge in Del Rio. With a little over 5,300 people still here, it’s nearly 1/3 the size of what it was on Saturday. Just spoke to the Del Rio Mayor, who tells me he hopes to have the bridge reopened on Monday. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/kTxEJkafPL
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 22, 2021
The listing also requests at least 10% of personnel to be fluent in Spanish or Haitian Creole.
“The contract was initially awarded in 2002 with the current term ending on May 31, 2022,” the DHS spokesperson said.
During the George H.W. Bush administration from 1991 to 1993, then-Attorney General William Barr detained as many as 12,000 Haitian asylum-seekers at the immigration facility in Guantanamo Bay, otherwise used to hold suspected terrorists.
Federal officials said Tuesday that numerous Haitian migrants waiting in Del Rio have been released into the United States, undercutting public statements by the Biden administration that thousands of those camped there faced expulsion to Haiti, according to the Associated Press.
As of 4:50 p.m. local time, there were around 5,300 people still near or under the bridge in Del Rio where makeshift camps had been set up for as many as 14,000 migrants pouring from the Mexican border, a Fox News reporter said on Wednesday.
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The Washington Examiner contacted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement but did not immediately receive a response.
