The president wants to detain thousands of people at a site that is notorious for its secrecy and history of abuse

It has been denounced as “America’s gulag”: a secretive, abuse-ridden Caribbean prison camp for terror suspects that Donald Rumsfeld once said contained “the worst of the worst”.

“All of us have scars in our souls, deformities, from living at Guantánamo,” a former Yemeni inmate recalled of his time at the notorious military detention facility in south-east Cuba.

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Here’s some more reaction to Donald Trump’s executive order instructing the military to prepare to house 30,000 immigrants at the US naval base in Cuba.

“Guantánamo is a stain on our nation’s honor,” Jerry Nadler, a Democratic congressman from New York, said.

For years, I have advocated for its closure, condemning the abuses and glaring lack of accountability that persist there. This massive expansion into a mass detention camp is morally indefensible & raises significant civil liberties concerns.

We cannot allow this level of dehumanization to become normalized. We need to shut down Guantánamo once and for all.

The facility has in the past two decades been used to deal with prisoners accused of terrorism-related offences with few ever charged or convicted

As part of his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, US president Donald Trump has announced that the United States will hold migrants at the notorious Guantánamo military detention facility in Cuba.

Known primarily for holding suspects accused of terrorism-related offences, Trump ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” that he said would be used to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”

President signs executive order instructing preparation of facility to house 30,000 immigrants at US naval base in Cuba

• US politics – live

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to prepare a huge detention facility at Guantánamo Bay that he said could be used to hold up to 30,000 immigrants deported from the US.

Trump signaled earlier on Wednesday that he intended to issue an order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to open a center in order to “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people”.