President Trump reportedly considered sending illegal immigrants to Guantanamo Bay as “enemy combatants” before administration officials quashed the idea.
“Are you f—ing kidding me? This is completely batshit,” a State Department official said about the idea, according to an excerpt from the book Anonymous obtained by the Guardian. The book is written by an anonymous author, who was “a senior official in the Trump administration.”
According to the book, Trump thought labeling every illegal immigrant as an “enemy combatant” might help deter the swell of illegal border crossings. The designation would have been the same label the Bush administration used on terrorists in Guantanamo Bay to skirt normal U.S. judicial proceedings.
The author said the proposal was “truly insane, on its face, for America to send migrant children and families to a terrorist prison in Cuba.” They added that the idea was quickly “quashed” by officials “before the president could make a public case for the concept.”
The White House has already said the book, which comes out this month, is “nothing but lies.” “Real authors reach out to their subjects to get things fact checked — but this person is in hiding, making that very basic part of being a real writer impossible,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said.
