Human rights groups have accused U.S. authorities of using Guantánamo Bay for decades to detain migrants fleeing Haiti, Cuba and other Caribbean nations.

Guantanamo does house a migrant processing center already, but it doesn't operate at anywhere near the scale of Trump's request. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canal called the order an "act of brutality" and lambasted the United States for housing migrants "next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention."