In March, amid a flare-up in gang violence that prompted the declaration of a state of emergency in Haiti, the United States made it known that – as usual – Haitians fleeing for their lives would not be welcome on US shores.
To that end, preparations were being made to deal with a potential mass maritime migration of US-bound Haitian refugees by diverting them to the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which is located on occupied Cuban territory and is of course better known for its illegal US prison-cum-torture centre.
A March 13 CNN article quoted General Laura Richardson, head of the US Southern Command, on the military’s preparedness for such an eventuality: “We did a full walkthrough of our contingency plan on Gitmo last summer with all of the interagency and all of my components.” The Stars and Stripes military magazine offered additional reassurance from Richardson: “Everything is refreshed – the equipment, everything is ready to go.”
And while media reports have been careful to specify that intercepted Haitians would be sent to a migrant processing facility in Guantanamo that is separate from the complex that houses “terrorist suspects”, it is hard to see the US’s “contingency plan on Gitmo” as anything but yet another racialised carceral undertaking. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.