The Trump administration says they are planning to send thousands of migrants to tent facilities at Guantánamo Bay, but officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department are unsure of how the plan will actually be implemented, CNN reported Thursday.
“Nobody really knows what’s going on, between DOD, [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], and [Customs and Border Protection]," one source told CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Haley Britzky. "We’ve got everybody pointing fingers, saying, ‘They’re in charge,’ ‘They’re paying for this,’ ‘They’re providing security.’ No one actually knows."
“There should have been a greater degree of planning before the execution. Now execution has begun, and everyone is trying to back into planning,” another source said.
READ MORE: 'Barbaric act': Trump slammed for sending immigrants to 'black hole' facility at Guantánamo
“Everybody is fighting for command and control and direction,” they added.
The government has reportedly sent “dangerous criminals” as well as “low risk” detainees to the notorious detention facility, which earned a reputation for torture during the George W. Bush administration. Human rights organizations have criticized the move. Some are being held at the maximum-security prison.
A senior Homeland Security official told CNN that everyone who had been sent to Guantánamo had been sent deportation orders.
“In addition to holding violent gang members and other high-threat illegal aliens, Guantánamo Bay is also holding other illegal aliens with final deportation orders. Every single alien at Guantanamo Bay has a final deportation order,” they said. “All these individuals committed a crime by entering the United States illegally.”
READ MORE: 'Small but important win': Court blocks Trump from sending some immigrants to Guantánamonamo
“For the first time ever, immigrants are being shipped to Guantánamo from the United States and denied access to lawyers. This unprecedented move is shocking and should worry everyone who thinks of the United States as a country guided by the rule of law,” Lee Gelernt, ACLU attorney and lead counsel on a lawsuit seeking access to detainees, told CNN.
“My goal is that people are not in these facilities for weeks and months. My goal is that there is a short-term stay, they are able to incarcerate them, take them, follow the process and get them back to their country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CNN’s Dana Bash.
But “nobody has talked about timeframes,” one of the sources said.