When Italy began laying out its controversial plan to process refugees beyond its borders in Albania, Italian officials defended the action by saying the centers would not be like Guantanamo Bay.
Now that President Donald Trump announced a plan to turn the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo into a large-scale migrant detention center, Italy’s struggles with its Albania strategy may be a preview to some of the legal and political challenges that lay ahead for the U.S.
One of the priorities that helped forge strong relations between the reelected U.S. presient and Italy’s leader, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, has been a desire to curb mass migration – for Trump from Latin America via Mexico and for Meloni from Africa and the Middle East via the Mediterranean Sea.
Trump said he wants to turn Guantanamo from a Naval base and high-security prison for 9/11-era terrorism suspects into a base with space, facilities, and personnel to process as many as 30,000 “high-priority” immigrants – nearly five times the base’s current number of residents. It’s part of Trump’s plan to deport as many as 20 million undocumented migrants from the U.S.
Covering about 45 square miles (around two-thirds the size of the District of Columbia) in southeastern Cuba, the prison at Guantanamo at its peak in 2002 and 2003 housed roughly 800 people accused of terror-related crimes. But there are just 15 prisoners there now. […]
— Read More: justthenews.com
