The first US flights carrying detained migrants to America’s notorious Guantanamo military base in Cuba were underway Tuesday as President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on illegal migration, the White House said.Guantanamo is primarily known as a detention center for suspects accused of terrorism-related offenses, but the base also has a history of being used to hold migrants, and Trump last week ordered the preparation of a 30,000-person “migrant facility” there.”Today, the first flights from the United States to Guantanamo Bay with illegal migrants are underway,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Fox Business.Trump has launched what his second administration is casting as a major effort to combat illegal migration, trumpeting immigration raids, arrests and deportations on military aircraft.The president has made the issue a priority on the international stage as well, threatening Colombia with sanctions and massive tariffs for turning back two planeloads of deportees.The Guantanamo prison was opened in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and has been used to indefinitely hold detainees seized during the wars and other operations that followed. The conditions there have prompted consistent outcry from rights groups, and UN experts have condemned it as a site of “unparalleled notoriety.”- ‘Perfect place’ -Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden both sought to close the facility, but Congress has opposed efforts to shutter Guantanamo and it remains open to this day.It still holds 15 people incarcerated for militant activity or terrorism-related offenses, among them several accused plotters of the 9/11 attacks, including self-proclaimed mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.But migrants will be detained in a separate part of the base.According to US Southern Command, there are some 300 American military personnel at Guantanamo supporting “illegal alien holding operations.”The base has for decades been used to hold Caribbean asylum seekers and refugees caught at sea, and was used in the 1990s to house tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans who fled crises in their homelands.They were accommodated in tent cities, with many eventually sent home after being held at Guantanamo for years.Thousands of undocumented migrants have been arrested since Trump’s January 20 inauguration, including some accused of crimes.An unknown number have been repatriated to Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil and other countries, and Trump has vowed to expel millions.US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Monday described Guantanamo as the “perfect place” to detain migrants as he visited the border with Mexico — an area where the Trump administration has boosted the country’s military presence in recent weeks.The Pentagon will provide any necessary assets “to support the expulsion and detention of those in our country illegally,” Hegseth said.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleged Tuesday that some aid groups may have intentionally sabotaged projects to make a point after he froze most US assistance.Rubio, currently on a Latin America tour, doubled down on President Donald Trump’s 90-day suspension of assistance as reports emerge around the world of local aid groups curtailing or stopping life-saving aid.”I issued a blanket waiver that said, if this is life-saving programs, OK; if it’s providing food or medicine or anything that is saving lives and is immediate and urgent, you’re not included in the freeze,” Rubio told reporters in Costa Rica.”I don’t know how much more clear we can be than that,” he said.”I would say if some organization is receiving funds from the United States and does not know how to apply a waiver, then I have real questions about the competence of that organization, or I wonder whether they’re deliberately sabotaging it for purposes of making a political point,” said the former Republican senator.A day earlier, Rubio said he had been made acting head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) as Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk look at drastically scaling back aid and merging the organization under the State Department.Non-governmental groups say they have heard multiple cases of aid groups that have struggled to operate, mostly smaller organizations that provide targeted services such as health care or education and did not have reserves.Some schools have shuttered in Uganda, where USAID was backing a universal education program, and demining work has been disrupted in Cambodia, among other cases.- Targeted support to allies -Rubio announced that he was issuing new waivers to ensure the flow of assistance to Costa Rica, a major US partner on issues including migration and drug-trafficking.US assistance includes biometric work to stop smugglers, which Rubio pointed out as an example of concrete American help that benefits its own interests.”Under President Trump, we have a foreign policy in which we are strong in providing support to our allies,” Rubio said as he met Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves.The top US diplomat, on his third stop in his first trip, is a longtime China hawk who is also looking to push back on Beijing’s influence in the region.Costa Rica in 2007 switched recognition to China from Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by Beijing — a turning point as other Latin American countries followed suit.But US officials also see hope in the example of Costa Rica, whose relations with China have turned rockier in recent years.Chaves in 2023 effectively forbade Chinese tech titan Huawei from bidding for the nation’s 5G network due to Beijing’s refusal to sign an international agreement on cybercrime.”When you confront companies that are not secure, they’re backed by governments like the government of China that likes to threaten, that likes to sabotage, that likes to use economic coercion to punish you,” Rubio said.Costa Rica has been “very firm, and I think they deserve a lot of support in confronting that,” Rubio said.