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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Guantanamo Bay’s Comeback Is a Warning

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate

News, Daily News, News Commentary, Politics

4.62.3K Ratings

🗓️ 6 February 2025

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Last week, Donald Trump announced that Guantanamo Bay would be used to house the “worst criminal illegal aliens” and claimed that it would be drastically scaled up to hold as many as 30,000 people. In addition to its infamous role in the War on Terror, it’s the latest use of Gitmo as an immigration deterrent—and legal grey zone. Guest: Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps.  Want more What Next? Join Slate Plus to unlock full, ad-free access to What Next and all your other favorite Slate podcasts. You can subscribe directly from the What Next show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Or, visit slate.com/whatnextplus to get access wherever you listen. Podcast production by Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme and Rob Gunther. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:35.9

Earlier this week, a military jet touched down on a sunny landing strip in Cuba.

0:42.6

Inside were prisoners, migrant prisoners.

0:46.3

They were handcuffed in matching gray sweatsuits.

0:49.8

The first of what Donald Trump says could be tens of thousands of immigrants being relocated to a

0:55.7

detention center that Americans have been trying to close for more than a decade now.

1:01.5

That detention center, of course, is Guantanamo Bay.

1:05.8

I got word of it, and on the one hand, it seemed like a shock, as I hope it feels to everybody,

1:13.3

but also I've kind of been expecting this moment for about 10 years.

1:20.4

I called up Andrea Pitzer to talk about all this because she's got thoughts on Guantanamo Bay.

1:30.6

She wrote a book on concentration camps.

1:36.2

She says Gitmo is one. We just don't call it that very often.

1:47.9

And I ended up deciding to open and close my book with Guantanamo because I felt like it was this looming background thing that if we did not get it closed, had the potential to become an ongoing, enormous, horrific nightmare.

1:56.9

Theoretically, these migrants are being relocated to Gitmo because they are really bad guys, too

2:03.5

dangerous to stay in the U.S. This first group was said to be members of a Venezuelan gang.

2:09.9

That's according to the Secretary of Homeland Security and Trump's borders are.

2:14.5

They both used this phrase, it was for the worst of the worst. And I got to tell you,

2:19.9

if you're somebody that's looked at the long-term history of Guantanamo, the worst of the worst

...

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