Free Republic

Washington (PTI) -- US President Donald Trump has signed a presidential memorandum to set up a 30,000-person migrant facility at Guantanamo Bay to detain “high-priority criminal aliens.” The Guantanamo Bay facility, which has so far been used to hold terrorists, will now also house illegal immigrants with criminal records. The signing took place on Wednesday, with Trump directing the Departments of Defence and Homeland Security to prepare the facility. According to the memorandum, he ordered the expansion of the Migrant Operations Center at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay to accommodate “high-priority criminal aliens” and address related enforcement needs. “Most people don’t...

**SNIP** Those busts included dozens of members of the vicious Venezuelan Tren de Aragua prison gang — as well as multiple MS-13 gang members — at least five “career criminals” nabbed by the Drug Enforcement Administration and scores of others wanted for murder, kidnapping, child molestation and more. ICE has shared daily “enforcement updates” on X since Jan. 23, outlining their daily arrest totals, as well as detainers lodged — formal requests for inmates to be held until they can be picked up by immigration officials. Through Tuesday, officials made 5,537 arrests and lodged 4,333 detainers, giving authorities a running...

Former President Barack Obama didn’t listen to Pentagon officials when they told him Taliban mullah Khairullah Khairkhwa was too dangerous to release. Instead, he freed the group that came to be known as the ‘Gitmo five’ — Khairkhwa alongside four of his buddies — from the Guantanamo Bay prison in 2014 in exchange for a U.S. soldier who deserted his post. Obama all but guaranteed that Khairkhwa and the four other men would be sent to Qatar, where their movements would be restricted and where they could do no harm. As it turns out, the Taliban isn’t as trustworthy as...

LAREDO, Texas -- The white tents that sit here on the very edge of the U.S border, with Mexico a literal stone’s throw away, represent one of the jewels in the crown of the Trump administration’s recent efforts to get a grip on the immigration crisis. They are the temporary courtrooms set up as part of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) -- known colloquially as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. That policy, established earlier this year, involves sending migrants who are trying to claim asylum back to Mexico during their proceedings -- instead of releasing them into the U.S. while...

The transfer is the largest yet during the Biden administration. ... In a major development, the Pentagon on Monday announced the transfer 11 Yemeni detainees at Guantanamo Bay to Oman, a move that now leaves only 15 detainees still at the detention facility. "The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing U.S. efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility," said a DOD statement. In recent weeks, the Pentagon had transferred out four other detainees from Guantanamo including a detainee who was brought to...

The usual suspects – plus one holier-than-thou world power – are calling on the U.S. military to repent for its treatment of Muslim chaplain James Yee (aka "Yousef" or "Yousif" Yee). Refresher: Yee's the Army captain who ministered to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Seven months ago, Yee was arrested on suspicion of espionage. He spent 76 days in solitary confinement; the case didn't materialize; he was convicted on lesser charges of adultery and downloading pornography. Last week, the Army Southern Command chief who oversees military operations at Guantanamo dismissed those convictions. What more do Yee and his...

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday nominated veteran and author Pete Hegseth as the Secretary of Defense for his second administration. Hegseth, who has spent the past eight years as a host on Fox News' "FOX & Friends Weekend," has been a major advocate for veterans and the military. He also served in the Army National Guard, and served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

West said 'American Taliban' John Walker Lindh was 'not a terrorist'.. Kamala Harris has a "powerful" new campaign adviser: her brother-in-law Tony West, the former Obama Justice Department attorney who defended a convicted terrorist sentenced to 20 years in prison for fighting with the Taliban and colluding with al-Qaeda. West is now "a powerful adviser" to Harris's "new campaign," Axios reported Friday. Roughly 20 years prior, West held a different role: attorney for a Taliban terrorist. West in 2002 signed on to defend "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan one year earlier and subsequently indicted for...

Customs and Border Protection had the wherewithal to question the second would-be assassin and put him on their radar, yet Homeland Security Investigations took no action when they learned about him.

As a congressman, Walz cited Guantanamo Bay facility as 'serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East' ... Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was named Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick on Tuesday, pushed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and move its terrorist captives into holding facilities in the United States. His position put him to the left of other prominent Minnesota Democrats like Amy Klobuchar, but Gitmo, Walz said, is a "serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East." As a House member representing Minnesota's First Congressional District, Walz voted against a 2009 measure that would have barred...

Ritter talks about the idea of peace via reverse-spin. and the question of a trillion dollars in the pentagon budget that simply turned up missing... The missing trillion might have something to do with our black-op manned space program...

Is it now so politically incorrect to oppose gay marriage that a white shoe law firm will throw over a client rather than defend a law signed by President Bill Clinton? Apparently so, after yesterday's show of invertebrate representation by King and Spalding, the giant Atlanta-based law firm. King and Spalding dropped the House of Representatives as a client yesterday only days after agreeing to argue for the House in defending the constitutionality of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or Doma. The jilting prompted the firm's lead attorney in the case, former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, to resign...

Ramzi Kassem repped an Al Qaeda terrorist; now he’s setting immigration policy for Biden. “This is not a battle of good versus evil,” Ramzi Kassem wrote in an op-ed that appeared on September 17, 2001. “The perpetrators were probably not driven to their actions by some intrinsic evil or inherent hatred of the good United States.” He went on to argue that the Al Qaeda attack a week earlier was the result of the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies.” Two decades later, Kassem, now a CUNY law professor and prominent...

As a young military officer at the height of the war on terror, Lt. Ron DeSantis was often seen running on the beach of Guantánamo Bay and along its ridgeline, encircling Camp America. It was a chaotic time at the U.S. military detention facility in Cuba, and as an ambitious Navy lawyer, DeSantis was positioned to witness history up close. He arrived at Joint Task Force Guantanamo in the spring of 2006 as its leaders were grappling with multiple challenges and global scrutiny. Aggressive tactics were adopted to break a hunger strike. An armed clash erupted between detainees and a...

Two Pakistani brothers held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay detention facility for two decades were freed and returned home on Friday to be reunited with their families, officials said. Pakistan arrested Abdul and Mohammed Rabbani on suspicion of links to al-Qaida in 2002 in Karachi, the country’s southern port and largest city. That same year, Ramzi Binalshibh, a top al-Qaida leader, was arrested by Pakistan’s spy agency Inter-Services Intelligence on a tip from the CIA. The Rabbanis’ releases come months after a 75-year-old Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was freed from Guantanamo. The Foreign Ministry later Friday released a statement...

Since President Trump left office, many of the “trustworthy” media outlets have created a talking point that is now held by a minority, yet noticeable number of Conservative Americans. The belief is “DeSantis is Trump, without the baggage.” If DeSantis chooses to run for president, whether that is in the next election or sometime down the road, his opponents (from both parties) and leftist media will have no shortage of ammunition to create baggage specific to him. 1) As Governor of Florida, DeSantis image as a protector of school children and being “anti-groomer” has gone unchallenged. His press secretary Christina...

As the whole country was preoccupied with the Chinese spy balloon last week, one of the 9/11 terrorist planners was quietly released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba by the Biden regime. On Thursday, Majid Khan, now 42, was moved to Belize, his legal team announced. “Today, more than 16 years after he was brought to Guantánamo Bay and almost a year after he completed a military commission sentence there, pursuant to a plea and cooperation agreement with U.S. authorities, Majid Khan was transferred to Belize,” his legal team said in a statement. Khan is one of the few detainees to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. military officials said Thursday they released and sent to Belize a onetime al-Qaida courier who had completed his sentence. The transfer of Majid Khan ended an imprisonment that included torture at clandestine CIA sites and 16 years at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. Khan, a Pakistani citizen who grew up outside Baltimore, wound up in the Central American nation under a Biden administration agreement with that government. Khan’s lawyers said he should have been freed last February under a pretrial agreement. Khan, who is in his early 40s, said in a statement through his legal team...

The Biden administration is close to reaching a shameful plea deal that could exclude the death penalty for five Islamic terrorists charged with coordinating the 2001 attacks, sources told Judicial Watch during a recent trip to the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba where the jihadists are incarcerated. For years Judicial Watch has traveled to the U.S. Naval base in southeast Cuba to observe the military tribunal trials of 9/11 terrorists and others, including USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Judicial Watch also covers all the hearings held by the Obama-created parole panel known as the Periodic Review Board via...

Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after telling the court meeting Jeffrey Epstein was the 'biggest regret of my life' and apologizing to her victims 'for the pain that you have experienced.' Judge Alison Nathan handed down the 240-month sentence followed by five years supervised release after calling Maxwell's crimes 'heinous and prefatory.' The judge imposed a fine of $750,000, pointing to the $10million bequest Maxwell received from Epstein. Judge Nathan also recommended she be sent to the Danbury, Connecticut, Federal Correctional Institution. The low-security federal prison was the inspiration for the fictional prison in the...