Trump is using Guantanamo to rob migrants of their humanity

The Guantanamo base was used in the wake of 9/11 to exploit foreigners for naked and cruel political purposes, writes Eric Lewis. Trump must not be allowed to do the same again

“The worst of the worst.” The words echo ominously down through the decades from America’s late secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld to Trump’s newly installed secretary of homeland security, Kristi Noem.

Each was talking about men that a new administration was sending to Guantanamo Bay. For Rumsfeld, it was detainees swept up in the aftermath of 9/11. For Noem, it is undocumented migrants – and the new administration’s announced plan to send 30,000 of them to the infamous prison camp.

Each was trying to dehumanise a group of foreigners for the most naked and cruel political purposes. Each was acting without any preparation or planning, without concern for who they were exiling to an offshore prison, and what legal justification they might have for doing so; each proceeded with the hope that Americans would not care and would in time forget the human rights violations committed in their name.

They did not know then and they do not know now who they were detaining or what they might have done or not done. Yet by ostracising these men as inhuman monsters, they could convince a public hungry for scapegoats that they were doing their jobs.

In 2002, Rumsfeld sent nearly 800 men to Guantanamo despite the clear message from the commanding officers at the Naval Base that it had no infrastructure to house them in a humane way.

Within a few months, the senior officers at Guantanamo understood that, rather than the worst of the worst, they had brought hundreds of nobodies, foreigners who had been sold by Afghan and Pakistani troops for bounties, with at best a few foot soldiers. They were tortured for actionable information, which they did not have, and when this was reported back to Washington, they were told to try harder. In the aftermath of September 11, President Bush wanted to capture terrorists, and Rumsfeld was going to ignore all evidence to the contrary.

Remarkably, as the new migrant detainees were being brought shackled to this detention facility on the eastern tip of Cuba, 15 of the originals remain after more than two decades , some uncharged and others in a military commission system beset by errors, constitutional violations and decades-long delays.

Why was Guantanamo chosen then? Because the Bush Administration believed it could be a lawless enclave where prisoners would have no rights and no access to American courts. No lawyers, no contact with their families, no application of the Geneva Conventions, no exposure to media scrutiny, except on the occasional Congressional visits when the food improved, and the beatings stopped.

The same dehumanising program is going on again to serve Trump’s campaign bogeyman of uncontrolled immigration. Noem not only called these men the “worst of the worst,” she threw in that they were “ratbags”. She took time out to take a military plane for a fly-in visit to Guantanamo and a heavily advertised photo-op.

Like transportation to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) by the British, or Devil’s Island by the French, or Japanese internment or internal exile of dissidents by Mussolini, or, dare we say it, early concentration camps under Nazi rule, it is a feature of the authoritarian playbook to ship people far away from where public opinion or courts may intervene with the project of ostracising “the other,” men who can be detested and then forgotten.

That is not to say the Trump Administration is planning any sort of final solution for migrants, but rather that authoritarian regimes begin by getting a despised group out of the way and declaring that a vexing problem has been solved.

Turning human beings into non-people, into “vermin”, or “poisoners of the blood” is always indefensible and degrades the humanity not only of the victims, but of those who stand idly by because they are not in the group singled out for obloquy or exile.

But in the case of these detainees, it is also incompetent as recent events have shown. The idea that Guantanamo can house 30,000 people safely and properly is ludicrous, as those of us who have spent great chunks of time down there defending detainees well know. The facilities that were built for Haitians (yet another ostracised group; remember the dog and cat eating) and Cubans captured at seas in the 1990s were tents behind razor wire, and they have not been maintained for more than 30 years. They were found to be squalid and uninhabitable then and have degraded beyond repair.

Guantanamo is not ready for the detainees being brought now just as it was not ready in 2002. The costs have been enormous. On Wednesday, the Trump Administration again reversed course and sent the detainees back to the United States, because Guantanamo was infeasible to house them and shipping migrants outside the United States, far from family and the law would inevitably have been struck down in the courts. But over the last weeks, 290 men have been cycled through the camp.

Whether or not Trump decides to use it again, the message had been delivered – military planes, shackles, cages – the iconography of Guantanamo had now been attached to migrants. The new regime at Guantanamo has been a replay of the detention of Muslim men nearly a quarter century ago. Men recently sent there reported that they were held in cages or in solitary confinement. Instead of Korans, they were given bibles. They were given buckets for bodily functions, in full view of guards and subject to degrading body cavity searches.

They were given one hour per week outside their cells. There have been suicide attempts. No lawyers have been permitted to meet with them, despite their right to counsel. An affidavit submitted by a military colonel declared that counsel visits were being considered but noted the “extensive logistical challenges” and the need for security clearances for the lawyers, although it is unclear why security clearances would be needed for immigration detainees.

Was the Trump Guantanamo feint just more symbolic theatre or will there be yet another U-turn? Certainly, Trump has not ruled out using Guantanamo and the issues of costs and logistics have rarely inhibited the opportunity to humiliate and punish some marginalised group. Amid a welter of distractions, this fundamental rejection of the rule of law must compel our attention.

Eric Lewis is on the board of directors at The Independent. He is also chair of Reprieve US and his book on Guantanamo is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press