Yesterday Donald Trump announced that he wants to hold 30,000 people he deems to be in the country illegally in an, as of now, non-existent facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. This story has quickly faded from the attention of our mass media outlets who are justifiably focusing on the loss of life last night in the mid-air collision over the Potomac River. Before the diverted attention almost all the focus was on the lack of facilities at Guantanamo, where they’d be located (apparently on a golf course), and how it would be paid for. A small bit of coverage focused on the human impacts. None of it even mentioned the real reason for the choice of Guantanamo. To get to the root of the reason we first need to jump into the “wayback machine”.
After the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 the U.S. started to track down those who had planned, funded, and trained the perpetrators of the assaults. After the capture of those involved, none of them was brought to the United States. This was intentional. It was done to deprive them of the rights of due process granted under the Constitution of the United States. Early on those involved were transported to the military facilities at Guantanamo Bay. Others who were captured as the U.S. involvement grew in Afghanistan and Iraq were transported to CIA “black sites“. All of the captives were deemed “enemy combatants” and were kept out of the U.S. judicial system. They were often tortured, subjected to so called “enhanced” interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. It was all done to keep captives outside the U.S. legal system. And that’s the real reason Trump and his cronies are planning to ship people to a Guantanamo Bay holding area, to deprive them of their rights of due process. Consider this….
An apprehended person in the United States has a legal right to counsel, an attorney. They have a right under habeas corpus to contest their detention. There are rules and laws in place that provide for review through the legal (and in this case immigration) system, including appeals to courts of law, to contest detentions and deportations. All of these rights end once someone is outside of the United States. Hence the need for Guantanamo. Follow the path: someone is detained on a suspicion of not having proper documentation to legally be in the United States. They are immediately put on a plane to Guantanamo Bay. And once they arrive there? All of their rights to review within the U.S. legal system are gone.
The U.S. media is once again failing to uncover the real reasons, the true story behind the actions of the Trump administration. Perhaps my writing will start to uncover this failure. Perhaps you knowing is the next step.
Resist