Trump's Plan to Send Migrants to Guantanamo Bay is 'Frankly Insane,' Former State Department Official Says

A senior State Department official now working at Yale University as a law professor has weighed in on President Donald Trump's plan to send up to 30,000 migrants to Guantanamo Bay for detainment, calling the idea "insane".

"It is a mirage, but it's also insane," said Harold Hongju Koh in an interview with POLITICO magazine.

On Tuesday, Trump sent an initial group of migrants to Guantanamo Bay after announcing plans to begin detaining migrants at the Cuban base. Ten detainees were sent on the initial flight who were all part of the Tren de Aragua, a gang originating in Venezuela's prisons.

In the early 1990s, Koh headed a team comprised of Yale students and human rights attorneys challenging the detention of Haitian immigrants at Guantanamo under the administration of former President George H.W. Bush.

Many Haitian immigrants were fleeing persecution following a military coup and were rounded up by the U.S. Coast Guard on American shores. Their claims of asylum were largely rejected under the Bush administration, and they were subsequently sent to a temporary detention camp in Cuba.

"This has been a consistent pattern over and over again," said Koh, who served as a top attorney for the State Department during the Obama administration. "Shortsighted policymakers think they found a solution, and they have ended up creating a problem for which they have no exit strategy. That's exactly what they're doing again."

Koh continued to refer to Trump's plan as "unprecedented, delusional and punitive."

"Unprecedented, because Guantanamo has been used to hold people who are coming to the United States. It's never been used as a place to send people who've been in the United States, especially those who have been lawfully in the United States at some point," he continued.

Originally published by Latin Times.