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Donald Trump’s return to the White House has ushered in the most aggressive immigration crackdown in modern US history–one that extends far beyond the country’s borders. His administration is rapidly expanding deportation efforts, detaining migrants in offshore facilities, and striking controversial agreements with Latin American and Caribbean nations to outsource detention and enforcement.
Nowhere is this overreach more evident than at Guantánamo Bay, where the US military has begun holding deported migrants in what Trump hopes will become a large-scale detention site.
The legal and human rights implications of this strategy remain murky, as does the extent of Trump’s authority to operate detention centers outside US soil.
Meanwhile, his administration is pressuring regional governments to accept deported migrants, offering financial incentives or leveraging diplomatic influence. Some leaders, like Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo and Panama’s José Raúl Mulino, have agreed to cooperate, while others, like El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, have gone so far as to offer to house detainees in their own prison systems.
Despite the dystopian nature of Trump’s global offensive, resistance is mounting. Labor unions, social movements, and political parties are already taking action. In some cases, entire nations and even regional coalitions are mobilizing against Trump’s agenda.
Only two weeks into the new president’s administration, it is clear that Trump’s immigration crackdown will be met with fierce opposition–both in the US and abroad.
Guantánamo Bay: the legal and humanitarian crisis begins
Donald Trump’s order to expand the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay to house deported migrants is officially being implemented. The first flight carrying 10 deported Venezuelan nationals landed in Guantánamo Bay on February 4, according to the Department of Defense. Guantánamo already has a detention facility, but deported migrants will be held separately from current detainees.
Trump’s Guantánamo expansion plan is quite ambitious. His stated goal is to detain 30,000 people there. However, developing that kind of capacity could take months of heavy lifting and ample resources. Some reports project that the cost to US taxpayers of this offshore detention plan could exceed a billion dollars.
For now, tents have been erected to detain the migrants. The current capacity for migrant detention at Guantánamo Bay is less than 200, as reported by CNN.
The Cuban government has categorically rejected the imprisonment of migrants in Guantánamo Bay. Territory which it considers illegally occupied by the US. And although migrants are already being held there, legal questions remain around the practice of transporting migrants outside the United States while continuing to detain them.
What legal jurisdiction are migrants under at Guantánamo Bay? If it is that of the United States, then detainees must be guaranteed a series of rights. The center itself must also operate under certain conditions and limitations. The Department of Defense claims their detention at Guantánamo Bay is temporary. Yet it’s unclear how long migrants can legally be detained at this site. Or if their detention there is even legal in the first place.
On February 6, a coalition of legal and civil rights groups submitted a Freedom of Access to Information (FOIA) request for details about the nature, conditions, and terms of the confinement of migrants at Guantánamo.
As Trump begins to make his anti-immigrant program a reality, complications continue to emerge.
Trump’s mass deportation plan faces legal and political barriers
One of Trump’s biggest obstacles has been the demand from migrants’ home countries for humane conditions during their forced return. After a tense standoff with Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Trump cited challenges in dealing with nations of origin as a major factor in his decision to expand the detention capacity of Guantánamo Bay.
However, it seems like Guantánamo Bay alone won’t be an adequate solution for the Trump administration’s expanding immigration offensive.
As Secretary of State Marco Rubio continues his tour of Latin America and the Caribbean, a key goal of his meetings has been to secure support from heads of state for Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Guatemala joins Trump deportation network
On February 5, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo confirmed that his country is willing to accept migrants of other nationalities being deported from the US under the Trump administration.
During a visit from Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday, Arévalo announced a new immigration agreement with the US, where Guatemala is now a third site for deportation, from where migrants will eventually be returned to their home countries at the expense of the US.
The deal seems to have satisfied Marco Rubio. But Carlos Barrientos, from the Comité de Unidad Campesina says this agreement is worse than the “safe third country” agreement that was previously in place. Before, the implication was that asylum seekers would be received while their asylum was being processed in the US.
“This government’s offer means that they will continue with the process for migrants to be returned to their country of origin…aligning themselves with Trump’s anti-immigrant policy implies a loss of sovereignty,” Carlos said.
He added that this approach does not address the root of the problem: poverty, disrespect for human rights, and violence.
“Why does the Trump government not impose restrictions and sanctions on arms manufacturers and dealers?…if it really wants to contribute? Why does it not prohibit the shipment of weapons and the trade of weapons with any country in the world? It does not do so because this suits the interests of the US military industrial apparatus.”
Before striking this deal with Guatemala, Rubio received an even more generous offer from another country in the region.
El Salvador’s mega-prison: Bukele’s offer to Trump
On February 3, during the Secretary of State’s visit to El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele “offered the United States of America the opportunity to outsource part of its prison system..in exchange for a fee.” Bukele offered to accept migrants of any nationality deported from the US.
He also offered to accept US-born citizens incarcerated in the US. A practice which would be illegal under current US prison laws.
They would be detained in what the President calls El Salvador’s “mega-prison.” Officially known as the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). The mass prison is the hallmark of Bukele’s administration.
Bukele built CECOT in 2023 and began a mass incarceration campaign to respond to the violence and crime that had plagued the country for decades. El Salvador is indeed much “safer” today, however it now has the highest incarceration rate in the world–even outpacing the United States. It has swept away tens of thousands of young men into what human rights advocates have described as a “cement pit.”
Now, Bukele has offered the service his country perfected to the US for profit.
Social movements, such as the Block of Resistance and Popular Rebellion have condemned Bukele’s offer to the US, saying that it infringes upon the sovereignty of the nation:
“While Donald Trump’s government violates the rights of our countrymen and other migrant populations, Bukele behaves like a servant of that government,” the group declared in a statement. “What the people want is for the rights of our countrymen in the US to be respected and for the thousands of victims of the state of exception to be freed in our country and for the political persecution to cease.”
Neither Trump or Rubio have indicated whether they intend to accept Bukele’s arrangement. However, both of them made glowing remarks about the Salvadoran president’s ideas.
“If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Trump said during an executive order signing ceremony in the Oval Office.
Panama’s role in Trump’s deportation machine faces resistance
During Rubio’s visit to Panama on February 1, President Mulino agreed to explore the possibility of expanding their previous immigration agreement with the US. This would mean that migrants passing through Panama on their way to the US could potentially be detained there and forcibly returned to their nation of origin.
One of the new arrangements that Mulino agreed to was the US taking control of a key airstrip in the Darién, a rain forest area that borders the Pacific Ocean and Colombia. In recent years, this has become a key, but perilous, route for thousands of immigrants from across the world seeking to reach the US by foot. The US wants to use this airstrip as a primary cog in Trump’s mass deportation apparatus.
“I’ve offered the area of the Nicanor track, the Metetí, Darién, so that it is from where the process of repatriation of people from different parts, such as Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, among other nationalities, is supplied,” said President Mulino in an interview.
Saúl Méndez, leader of SUNTRACS (Unified National Union of Workers of the Construction and Similar Industries) explained the consequences of his government’s cooperation with Trump’s mass deportation plan:
“A refugee concentration camp is going to be created in the Darién. It is a [covert] gringo military base where US warplanes can land…to attack other Latin American peoples.”
Organized workers in Panama have vowed to continue resisting US influence in their country while fighting for their sovereignty and self-determination.
However, Trump’s anti-immigrant crusade isn’t limited to Latin America and the Caribbean. Up to 750,000 migrants from India reside in the US, making them the third largest undocumented migrant block after Mexico and El Salvador.
India caught in Trump’s deportation dragnet
The first deportation flight of handcuffed Indian migrants arrived in the Northern Indian city of Amritsar on February 5.
The far-right Modi government has fully cooperated with Trump’s mass deportation program. Indian media has quoted officials repeating Trump’s anti-immigrant talking points, such as undocumented migrants breeding crime (immigrants commit crime at far less rates than US-born citizens).
The cooperation of the Modi government and the treatment of Indian migrants has sparked outrage among activists and opposition leaders. One minister in the provincial government in the Punjab province, where most of the deportees are from, stated that migrants have supported the US economy and instead deserve “permanent residency” there.
Broader implications of Trump’s foreign policy
There is still a significant amount of ambiguity around the details of Trump’s anti-immigrant apparatus. Especially the terms and limitations of offshore third sites:
- What nationalities will be detained in these sites?
- What qualifies a person to be sent to these centers?
- Could these measures include people who have been detained in centers already?
- What legal rights and processes will detainees be afforded?
- How long will they be held at these sites?
- What will the conditions at the sites be?
If one thing is clear–Trump’s expansion of immigration enforcement beyond the borders of the United States is unprecedented.
The transportation and detention of migrants at Guantánamo Bay has raised serious legal and human rights concerns. Trump’s reliance on deals with Latin American and Caribbean nations is already being met with pushback. If not from heads of state themselves, then from labor unions and social movements within the cooperative nations, who see these deals as violations of their national sovereignty and human rights.
The use of airstrips, mass detention centers, and deportations through military bases foreshadows an increasingly militarized and expansive US immigration policy.
These developments also represent a major escalation in US foreign policy. Which continues to apply unilateral sanctions, regime change operations, and other interventions on Venezuela, Cuba, and other countries in the region. For decades, this hard-line policy and the imposition of neoliberal policies on Latin America and the Caribbean has produced the very migrants that are under attack today. Yet, in its refusal to establish official relations with governments like Venezuela, the US is choosing to deport their migrants, not back to their country, but to offshore third sites like Guantánamo Bay.
Mounting resistance against Trump’s global immigration crackdown
Given the alarming and unrestrained scope of Trump’s war on migrants, legal challenges are all but inevitable. However, popular resistance is also mounting on the regional and domestic fronts.
On February 3, ALBA-TCP (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples Trade Treaty) committed to strengthen their collaboration against the onslaught that is US foreign policy, especially Trump’s mass deportation program. Many countries in the region have also publicly opposed Trump’s agenda, and taken measures to ensure the dignity of their migrants.
In the United States itself, a mass movement is growing against deportations and Trump’s extreme right-wing agenda. With protests seen almost daily in various cities.
As Trump’s international crackdown expands, reshaping immigration policy and human rights on a global scale, so too does the resistance against it. From Latin American governments rejecting Trump’s policies to grassroots movements mobilizing across the region and within the US, the battle over immigration rights is becoming a historic global struggle.
