Upon his return to the White House, Donald Trump wasted no time in issuing a barrage of executive orders advancing his authoritarian assault on vulnerable communities and the U.S. Constitution. Among these orders is one that instructs the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to prepare the naval station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the influx of 30,000 undocumented immigrants. At the signing ceremony, Trump told those assembled that the facility will “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.”
As a psychologist who’s paid close attention to goings-on at Guantanamo for more than 20 years, this is eerily and tragically familiar. It was under George W. Bush’s presidential watch that Guantanamo rapidly descended into lasting and worldwide infamy. When the first of almost 800 “war on terror” detainees were brought to the island from Afghanistan in January 2002, General Richard Myers — then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — described them as “people that would gnaw hydraulic lines in the back of a C-17 to bring it down.” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld insisted that they were the “worst of the worst” and claimed that they had no rights under the Geneva Convention.
Abuse and torture followed in short order. Detainees at Guantanamo were subjected to solitary confinement, sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, the disorienting manipulation of light and sound, exposure to extreme temperatures, physical beatings, and sexual and cultural humiliation. It didn’t take long before reports emerged that health professionals were playing important roles in the detention and interrogation operations there. And that’s how Guantanamo became the improbable site where the American Psychological Association (APA) — the world’s largest professional association of psychologists (including my own membership for a quarter-century) — hit rock bottom. For years thereafter, the APA’s leadership seemingly abandoned fundamental Do-No-Harm principles and failed to adequately challenge or condemn Guantanamo’s profound disregard for ethics and human decency.
It’s important to note that Bush’s vengeful “war on terror” and Trump’s vicious war on immigrants share some key features. Denying reality, both have been presented as heroic and moral endeavors to protect our nation’s security and defend us from marauding invaders. Both have also been promoted through massive marketing campaigns characterized by gross misrepresentations and by the dehumanization of people deemed different and unworthy — and therefore deserving of exploitation, deprivation, and worse.
But there are important differences, of course. In the former case, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were a singular and traumatizing precipitating event. In contrast, Trump’s mass deportation agenda is a heartless escalation of longstanding offenses against undocumented immigrants that have been condoned or encouraged by leaders of both major political parties. That list of horrors includes extended detention in overcrowded, unsanitary, and sometimes frigid conditions; the prolonged separation of family members, including children from their parents; negligence in the provision of medical and mental health care; and the use of harassment, threats, and excessive force by government and for-profit prison personnel.
Especially in light of Guantanamo’s ugly history, Trump’s renewed embrace is a flagrant act of extreme cruelty and degradation. What conditions of confinement will the new detainees face? What quality of healthcare will they receive? Who will provide it? How will they access legal representation? And how will advocates learn of the abuses that they suffer?
There are no reassuring answers to these questions. But at the very least, one can hope that APA leaders — and other organizations that fell silent for far too long two decades ago — will not repeat past failures. This is the time to overcome the fear of reprisals and the lure of expediency, to speak out forcefully on behalf of those who cannot, and to join efforts aimed at preventing a second Guantanamo nightmare from unfolding.
Note: In December, the Society for the Study of Peace, Conflict, and Violence (Division 48 of the APA) issued a statement opposing mass deportation. It is available online here: https://peacepsychology.org/mass-deportations.