Trump officials eye daily migrant detainee flights to Guantanamo Bay

US government officials are moving rapidly to fulfill President Trump's orders to turn the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay into a massive immigration detention complex, making plans to send daily flights there with migrant detainees, two US officials familiar with the deliberations told CBS News, Report informs.

So far, two US military flights have been sent to Guantanamo Bay this week with fewer than two dozen migrant detainees who officials said have alleged ties to the notorious Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, which is expected to be labeled a foreign terrorist group at Trump's direction.

But the administration's objective is to send groups of unauthorized migrants from the US mainland to Guantanamo each day, using military aircraft to airlift and relocate the detainees, the US officials said, requesting anonymity to discuss internal plans that have not been formally announced.

More migrant detainee flights to Guantanamo are planned for February 7 and the weekend, one of the officials said.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is planning to visit Guantanamo on February 7 to assess officials' efforts to set up and prepare enough detention space to hold as many as 30,000 migrants, as the president called for in an executive order last week, sources familiar with the plans said.

Military service members at the Naval Base have been setting up tents to act as holding sites with the goal of building enough for 2,000 migrants as part of an initial phase, though the alleged Venezuelan gang members transported to Guantanamo this week have been classified as "high-threat" detainees and held in cells inside the base's high-security prison. A separate part of the prison, created after the 9/11 attacks, also houses more than a dozen terrorism suspects.

The plans illustrate how quickly and aggressively the administration is moving to transform Guantanamo Bay, a 45-square-mile stretch of Cuban land the US has leased for over a century, into a focal point of Trump's plans to oversee the largest deportation operation in American history.