The Biden administration has put out a call for private contractors to bid for the right to operate a migrant detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — an apparent response to the thousands of Haitian migrants who have surged to the US-Mexico border area in recent days.
The solicitation for bids, which was posted by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Friday and first reported on by NBC News, notes that the selected contractor will need to have tents and cots “assembled and ready with little notice” — as well as have 10 percent of personnel be “fluent in Spanish and Haitian Creole.”
The ad also notes that while the facility “has a capacity of 120 people and will have an estimated daily population of 20 people,” the operator must be able to build temporary housing for “up to 400 migrants in a surge event” — an admonishment that is repeated twice in the solicitation.
DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa tweeted Wednesday that the department “is not and will not send Haitian nationals being encountered at the southwest border to the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay.
“The MOC has been used for decades to process migrants interdicted at sea for third-country resettlement,” she added. “The request for information (RFI) recently posted is a typical, routine first step in a contract renewal, and unrelated to the Southwest Border.”
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base has been in use since 1903 and is best known for its military prison, which has housed notorious terrorism suspects like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the alleged “mastermind” behind the 9/11 terror attacks — and the so-called “Taliban Five,” who were released in 2014 in exchange for US Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.
However, the base also includes an immigrant holding facility that was used in the 1990s to house Haitian refugees who were picked up at sea as they sought to flee to the US. During the Kosovo War of 1999, the Clinton administration initially selected the base as a temporary home for 20,000 refugees before scrapping that plan days later.
The Biden administration has begun moving thousands of migrants — many of them of Haitian origin — out from a makeshift encampment under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas after as many as 15,000 had congregated there.
Initially, it was thought that the majority of those rounded up from under the bridge would be deported back to Haiti. However, the Associated Press reported early Wednesday that thousands of migrants were being released into the US to be processed at their final destinations — and are being told merely to report to an immigration office within 60 days in an apparent reprise of the “catch and release” immigration policy.
DHS revealed late Wednesday that 1,401 migrants had been deported to Haiti since Sunday, while another 3,206 were either expelled under Title 42 or released into the US.
Two days earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned migrants who try to enter the US illegally that “your journey will not succeed and you will be endangering your life and your family’s lives.”
Emails requesting comment from two DHS officials listed as contacts on the bid solicitation were not immediately answered.
