US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has placed a solicitation for bids on its website searching for a private contractor to reopen and operate migrant detention facility on Guantánamo Bay, The Hill reports.
The Global Detention Project’s data shows that the detention center, located on the same US Naval Base as the notorious Gitmo prison, last housed migrants in 2017.
The contract solicitation says the little-known immigrant holding facility on the base will house 20 migrants daily and a capacity of 120 people and a surge capacity of up to 400 people, so the contractor has to maintain the equipment necessary to erect on site temporary housing facilities.
Among the requirements for the contractor is that he must be able to have tents and cots ready to be assembled on short notice.
The advertisement that requests 50 people to work at the facility, including also at least 10% of employees who are fluent in Haitian Creole and Spanish, prompting speculations that Biden administration is seeking place to house some of the thousands of Haitian migrants camping out in Del Rio, Texas, at the moment.
Employees must meet the minimum requirements of the unarmed custody officer job classification and the contractor will need to have a viable contingency plan to deploy these individuals within 24 hrs notification.
DHS, however, issued a statement saying that none of those migrants would end up in the Guantánamo facility in an effort to calm the anger and frustration from human rights advocates provoked by deportation blitz the agency started flying Haitians back to their country plunged in chaos.
A DHS spokesperson reiterated later that the bid is unrelated to the Southwest Border and that DHS is not and will not send to the Migrant Operations Center (MOC) in Guantanamo Bay Haitians encountered at the southwest border.
He stressed that the MOC has always been used for processing migrants interdicted at sea for third-country resettlement, noting that the posted RFI is a typical, routine first step in a contract renewal.
NBC News reminded that in the early 90s, Haitians seeking asylum to the US were sent to Guantánamo Bay with roughly 12,000 migrants being sent there under former President George H.W. Bush.
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