By Giff Johnson, editor, Marshall Islands Journal/RNZ Pacific correspondent
United States immigration and deportation enforcement continues to ramp up, impacting on Marshallese and Micronesians in new and unprecedented ways.
The Trump administration’s directive to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and deport massive numbers of potentially illegal aliens, including those with convictions from decades past, is seeing Marshallese and Micronesians swept up by ICE.
The latest unprecedented development is Marshallese and Micronesians being removed from the United States to the offshore detention facility at the US Navy base in Guantánamo Bay — a facility set up to jail terrorists suspected of involvement in the 9/11 airplane attacks in the US in 2001.
Marshall Islands Ambassador to the US Charles Paul this week confirmed a media report that one Marshallese was currently incarcerated at Guantánamo, which is also known as “GTMO”.
The same report from nationnews.com said 72 detainees from 26 countries had been sent to GTMO last week, including from the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia.
A statement issued by the US Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE operations, concerning detention of foreigners with criminal records at GTMO said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was using “every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens off our streets and out of our country.”
But the action was criticised by a Marshallese advocate for citizens from the Compact countries in the US.
‘Legal, ethical concerns’
“As a Compact of Free Association (COFA) advocate and ordinary indigenous citizen of the Marshallese Islands, I strongly condemn the detention of COFA migrants — including citizens from the Republic of the Marshall Islands — at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay,” Benson Gideon said in a social media post this week.
“This action raises urgent legal, constitutional, and ethical concerns that must be addressed without delay.”
Since seeing the news about detention of a Marshallese in this US facility used to hold suspected terrorists, Ambassador Paul said he had “been in touch with ICE to repatriate one Marshallese being detained.”
Paul said he was “awaiting all the documents pertaining to the criminal charges, but we were informed that the individual has several felony and misdemeanor convictions. We are working closely with ICE to expedite this process.”
Gideon said bluntly the detention of the Marshallese was a breach of Compact treaty obligations.
“The COFA agreement guarantees fair treatment. Military detention undermines this commitment,” he said.
Gideon listed the strong Marshallese links with the US — service in high numbers in the US military, hosting of the Kwajalein missile range, US military control of Marshall Islands ocean and air space — as examples of Marshallese contributions to the US.
‘Treated as criminals’
“Despite these sacrifices, our people are being treated as criminals and confined in a facility historically associated with terrorism suspects,” he said.
“I call on the US Embassy in Majuro to publicly address this injustice and work with federal agencies to ensure COFA Marshallese residents are treated with dignity and fairness.
“If we are good enough to host your missile ranges, fight in your military, and support your defence strategy, then we are good enough to be protected — not punished. Let justice, transparency, and respect prevail.”
There were 72 immigration detainees at Guantánamo Bay, 58 of them classified as high-risk and 14 in the low-risk category, reported nationnews.com.
The report added that the criminal records of the detainees include convictions for homicide; sexual offences, including against children; child pornography; assault with a weapon; kidnapping; drug smuggling; and robbery.
Civil rights advocates have called the detention of immigration detainees at Guantanamo Bay punitive and unlawful, arguing in an active lawsuit that federal law does not allow the government to hold those awaiting deportation outside of US territory.
In other US immigration and deportation developments:
- The delivery last month by US military aircraft of 18 Marshallese deported from the US and escorted by armed ICE agents is another example of the ramped-up deportation focus of the Trump administration. Since the early 2000s more than 300 Marshall Islanders have been deported from the US. Prior to the Trump administration, past deportations were managed by US Marshals escorting deportees individually on commercial flights.
- According to Marshall Islands authorities, there have not been any deportations since the June 10 military flight to Majuro, suggesting that group deportations may be the way the Trump administration handles further deportations.
- Individual travellers flying into Honolulu whose passports note place of birth as Kiribati are reportedly now being refused entry. This reportedly happened to a Marshallese passport holder late last month who had previously travel
- led in and out of the US without issue.
Most Marshallese passport holders enjoy visa-free travel to the US, though there are different levels of access to the US based on if citizenship was gained through naturalisation or a passport sales programme in the 1980s and 1990s.
US Ambassador to the Marshall Islands Laura Stone said, however, that “the visa-free travel rules have not changed.”
She said she could not speak to any individual traveller’s situation without adequate information to evaluate the situation.
She pointed out that citizenship “acquired through naturalisation, marriage, investment, adoption” have different rules. Stone urged all travellers to examine the rules carefully and determine their eligibility for visa-free travel.
“If they have a question, we would be happy to answer their enquiry at ConsMajuro@state.gov,” she added.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.