Guantanamo, Open For Business

When I first heard President Trump talking about sending illegal aliens to Guantanamo Bay, I doubted that he was serious. It turns out that he was:

The first flight carrying detained migrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay was set to head to the American naval base in Cuba, as the Trump administration undertakes the initial phases of expanding a small migrant-detention center there.

A flight Tuesday from Fort Bliss in Texas to Guantanamo, scheduled to leave in the afternoon, has roughly a dozen migrants on board, people familiar with the matter said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the developments Tuesday on Fox Business. “The first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are under way,” she said, listing recent immigration-related actions that President Trump has taken. “He’s not messing around.” [Ed.: FAFO, as they say.]

The U.S. base at Guantanamo always has had a facility to detain some migrants, typically those caught heading for the U.S. at sea. The administration has said it would expand operations there to hold up to 30,000; the base is now equipped to hold 120 migrants.

The liberal Wall Street Journal persistently refers to illegal aliens as “migrants,” but never mind that. Trump’s Guantanamo ploy is, in my view, brilliant. Why? As Democrats never tire of pointing out, rounding up and deporting 10 to 20 million illegal aliens is logistically a difficult task. We can identify and prosecute and/or deport the “worst of the worst,” as the administration puts it. But the sensible path to saying adios to millions of illegals is what Mitt Romney properly called self-deportation. We don’t round them up, they leave the way they came in, and go back to the countries of which they are citizens.

That is where Guantanamo comes in. It is one thing, if you are an illegal alien, to think you might need to live above the governor’s garage for a while. That isn’t so bad. But being sent to Guantanamo Bay? That is a daunting prospect.

I don’t know how many illegals will eventually be dispatched to Cuba, but I have no doubt that the number who self-deport rather than face that prospect will be substantial.

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