The immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who will be sent to the detention facility are those who have committed crimes, President Trump said.

MIAMI - President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that his administration plans to send thousands of undocumented immigrants to detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a move that has drawn sharp reactions from South Florida officials and immigration advocates.

Guantanamo does house a migrant processing center already, but it doesn't operate at anywhere near the scale of Trump's request. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canal called the order an "act of brutality" and lambasted the United States for housing migrants "next to the well-known prisons of torture and illegal detention."

In his first interview since being sworn in as defense secretary, Pete Hegseth sought to clarify how the federal government plans to use Guantánamo Bay to detain migrants being deported from the United States.