U.S. Is Holding Migrants in Cells That Once Held Al Qaeda Suspects

The Trump administration is holding 10 migrants with suspected gang affiliations in the same prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that has housed men accused of being members of Al Qaeda, U.S. defense officials said on Wednesday.

The Pentagon made the disclosure as U.S. forces are preparing a tent city for migrants, in compliance with an order from President Trump, on a separate portion of the base. But the Defense Department said the first group of 10 deportees, who were brought to the base on Tuesday, were too dangerous for the migrant site.

Instead they were put in a vacant section of the military prison that houses terrorism suspects and convicts, far from the area where other deportees will be held by the Department of Homeland Security.

On Wednesday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the men were members of a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. government last year labeled a “transnational criminal organization” for human trafficking and other criminal acts. The gang traces its beginnings to a prison in Venezuela.

The U.S. government has long held migrants at Guantánamo Bay, primarily Cubans and Haitians who have been picked up at sea. But the wartime prisoners have always been kept away from the migrants. Migrants are in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security. Suspected Al Qaeda members are in the custody of the Defense Department.