Power in the Absence of Law

US President Donald Trump wants to house "criminal" migrants in Guantánamo. The military has the say in the prison camp.

Jan 31, 2025 - 08:47

So now it 's Guantánamo again . US President Donald Trump wants to imprison 30,000 "criminal migrants", the "worst of the worst", in the US military base in Cuba.

Even if the prison conditions there , one can hope, will have nothing to do with what was done to the hundreds of terror suspects who were housed there since 2002, it is not just practical considerations that lead Trump to trumpet the slogan "Guantánamo" to the world.

Guantánamo represents the enforcement of power in the largely absence of law. That is why then-President Barack Obama wanted to close the prison camp as quickly as possible when he was first sworn in in 2009. But that is precisely the basic principle and goal of Trump's policy - not only in migration issues, by the way.

The practical reasons are easy to identify: Following the Laken Riley Act, which was just signed into law by Trump, the number of people taken into detention pending deportation is likely to rise sharply - especially since, according to some US media reports, target numbers of undocumented migrants to be arrested per day are now also supposedly being set.

The existing US deportation prisons are full, and where new ones are being built, lawyers, annoying district judges and protesters may not be far away.

Guantánamo is much simpler: The military is in charge there, and for the past few days it has been headed by the crazy former Fox presenter Pete Hegseth . Hegseth already revealed in his Senate hearing that, as a warrior, when faced with the question of "lethality" or "legality" of an operation, he would always choose lethality. Fuck off, rule of law.

All of this is to be communicated in exactly this way. The outrage of some is as much a part of the calculation as the enthusiasm of others, in the USA as in the rest of the world.