Water failure at Guantanamo Bay affects U.S. migrant operations there

"Part of the naval base gets its drinking water from a treatment facility connected by an underwater pipeline, and the Justice Department notified a federal court on Thursday of a "disruption to water service" in late August to the area where the government's Migrant Operations Center, or MOC, is located. That's where the U.S. is housing what it calls "low-threat aliens.""

"Critics of sending migrants to Guantanamo say the base's infrastructure is too primitive to hold large numbers of people there, and the ongoing water failure has added to their skepticism. The water problem is "another example of the fact that Guantanamo was not built for and cannot accommodate the thousands of migrants that the Trump administration wants to send there," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project."

Several migrants sent to Guantanamo Bay were moved from the Migrant Operations Center to another part of the U.S. naval base after a late-August disruption to water service. The MOC receives drinking water via a treatment facility connected by an underwater pipeline. Three migrants at the MOC at the time were transferred to an area that houses higher-risk detainees. ICE stated the low-threat and high-threat migrants are housed separately. The government reported 24 migrants on the base as of Sept. 9 and said water restoration would take at least a week. Critics say the infrastructure cannot support thousands of migrants and cite costs and safety concerns.

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