The US Department of Defense (DOD) announced the arrival of 10 migrants at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on Wednesday, after they took off the day before on the first US military plane headed there for the new mission.

The DOD’s statement said: “These 10 high-threat individuals are currently being housed in vacant detention facilities.” The statement reported that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is ensuring the “safe and secure detention” of the migrants before they are returned to their countries of origin or “other appropriate destination.”

In a presidential memorandum last week, President Donald Trump directed the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Homeland Security to “take all appropriate actions to expand the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to full capacity.” A statement by the US Southern Command explained that “more than 120 service members” arrived at the Naval Station earlier this week to support the migrant “holding operations led by DHS.”

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released images of the flight, saying that the migrants “were all part of Tren de Aragua” criminal organization. One of President Trump’s recent executive orders designates “cartels and other organizations as foreign terrorist organizations.” Tren de Aragua was named as having an agenda of “violence and terror in the United States.” According to the DHS release, the “worst of the worst criminals will be held at the military facility” in Guantanamo.

The White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Fox News reporters that “President Trump is not messing around.” US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem similarly posted on X stating, “President [Trump] has been very clear: Guantanamo Bay will hold the worst of the worst. That Starts today.”

The Cuban President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, has characterized the US’s intention to hold migrants at Guantanamo Bay as an “act of brutality.” Thousands of people in Los Angeles have also organized to protest President Trump’s immigration executive orders, which include ending birthright citizenship and deportations.

Yael Schacher, the Director of Refugees International for the Americas and Europe, has condemned President Trump’s use of Guantanamo Bay for migrants:

The Trump administration’s use of military planes to send immigrants to detention at Guantanamo Bay epitomizes the administration’s gratuitously cruel, illegal, expensive, and burdensome approach to immigration policy. Guantanamo Bay, an off-shore U.S. military base, is the notorious site where the United States inhumanely detained Cuban and Haitian asylum seekers in the 1990s, tortured prisoners in the early 2000s, and continues to detain people without charge or trial.

Since President Trump took office, he has begun an extensive overhaul of US immigration policies.