How are we gonna get all those people back and forth from Gitmo?
Posted on 10/18/2007 5:33:23 AM PDT by fweingart
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The U.S. military has expanded plans for a pop-up tent city to shelter migrants in case of a Caribbean boat crisis, spending more than $55 million to prepare a safe haven for up to 45,000 boat people. Since Fidel Castro took ill and ceded power of Cuba to his brother Raúl, the Bush administration has been preparing for a 10,000-person tent city.
In May, the Navy hired a Jacksonville contractor to build cement block buildings with 525 toilets and 248 showers on an empty slice of the base. The military could rapidly erect tents around the site. The buildings should be completed next summer at a cost of $16.5 million.
Now, under the expansion, the military has invited military contractors to bid on a $40 million project that would build a second tent city on the base for 35,000 migrants in need of humanitarian relief.
The Navy put out the bid in recent months, said Marine Capt. Manuel Carpio, the officer here assigned to plan for the crisis and coordinate with various U.S. and international agencies.
No boat crisis is on the horizon: Experts tracking Cuban migration of late say the majority of those fleeing the Castro-run side of the island have shunned the heavily patrolled Florida Straits for the western passage to Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.
But the planning is for a scenario on the scale of the 1994-95 crisis, when first Haitians and then Cubans fleeing instability in their homelands set out to sea in rickety rafts trying to reach South Florida.
The Clinton administration sent U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships to intercept the migrants and take them to this remote military foothold in Southeast Cuba. At one point, more than 40,000 boat people overwhelmed the base.
In the case of the Haitians, most were sent home. In the case of the Cubans, many spent up to a year in tent cities around the base before being resettled in the United States amid a U.S.-Cuban migration agreement that since has mostly returned Cubans to their homeland.
Now, the Bush administration has provisional plans for a similar military interdiction mission based on the lessons learned in the 1990s crisis. Those plans call for processing people captured at sea, first through the Department of Homeland Security to check for criminals, then through the International Organization for Migration, which assists in foreign resettlement and repatriation.
This Navy base currently has a huge chain-link fenced compound that could serve as a small tent city for the first 400 boat people intercepted from any Caribbean country. That operation would be run by the Department of Homeland Security, which already shelters up to about 40 asylum seekers on the base at a time.
Then, the U.S. military that now runs the prison camps for suspected al Qaeda terrorists and other war-on-terror captives would swing into action and build a tent camp. The prisoners are held miles away on the 45-square-mile base.
Metal shipping containers with cots and tents for any potential first wave of boat people are already here and ready.
In the 1990s, the boat crisis so overwhelmed the base that intercepted Cubans were sheltered in tents on an abandoned airfield and overflow boat people were housed in tents on a scrubby nine-hole golf course.
Others were put on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean, where the prison camps now sprawl.
The effort to build an infrastructure for a migrant tent city is separate from another $10 million tent city now rising on a different portion of the base. That tent city would be part of a legal compound surrounding two high-security courtrooms and is intended for lawyers, staff members and journalists for any upcoming war-on-terror trials.
The next military commission session is scheduled for Nov. 8. It is the arraignment of 21-year-old Canadian captive Omar Khadr. Khadr is accused of a war crime in the July 2002 grenade killing of a U.S. Army special forces medic, Staff Sgt. Christopher Speer, in Afghanistan.
It was not clear whether the tent city legal compound for war-on-terror trials would be ready in time for that session.
Re: The U.S. military has expanded plans for a pop-up tent city to shelter migrants in case of a Caribbean boat crisis, spending more than $55 million to prepare a safe haven for up to 45,000 boat people
What an imperialistic, fascist country!
Do I nreally need a sarc tag?
How are we gonna get all those people back and forth from Gitmo?
No. We’re a disgrace thanks to the socialist pansies some of us have elected to rule our lives and those of others.
35,000 refugees to be placed in a Concentration camp? That’s crazy, that’s 35,000 potential voters. Bring them here, give them driving licenses, register them to vote, and give them lots of free benefits too. LOL! sarc.
Boat people? From where?
Cubans do not need a boat to get to Gitmo. (Is this another case of geographic idiocy?)
Those that get picked up en route to Florida get placed at that camp.
If we do we'll have to build walls.
We owe so much to the porous borders. Our police are kept busy and our jails are bulging.
Thanks George!
And if it happens, the Democrats and the media (but I repeat myself) will still whine that Bush didn’t have a plan.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.