WASHINGTON, United States (CMC) — Jamaicans are among several foreign nationals who are currently being held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, according to the United States (US) Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

It said the detainees are from Haiti, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Brazil, China, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Kenya, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, Romania, Russia, Somalia, the United Kingdom, Venezuela and Vietnam.

In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, said the detention of foreigners with criminal records at Guantanamo Bay shows that President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are using “every tool available to get criminal illegal aliens off our streets and out of our country”.

US media reports said that as part of an expansion of the Trump administration’s effort to turn Guantanamo Bay into an immigration detention centre, officials had transferred detainees from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe to the naval base. Initially, the base housed mainly Spanish-speaking Latin American migrants awaiting deportation.

The list shows that Guantanamo Bay is housing detainees from all continents other than Antarctica.

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.

DHS officials said those with criminal records are classified as “high-risk” detainees and held at Camp IV, the post-9/11 prison complex at Guantanamo Bay that also holds around a dozen war on terror-era detainees, though in a distinct part of the facility.

Those without serious criminal records or any at all — deemed to be “low-risk” detainees — are housed at a barrack-like facility known as the Migrant Operations Centre.

As of this week, there were 72 immigration detainees at Guantanamo Bay, 58 of them classified as high-risk and 14 in the low-risk category.

The Trump administration has sought to use controversial detention centres and prisons to warn those in the US illegally — particularly those convicted of serious crimes — that they will be found, detained and deported if they don’t turn themselves in or self-deport.

“Whether it is CECOT, Alligator Alcatraz, Guantanamo Bay or another detention facility, these dangerous criminals will not be allowed to terrorise US citizens,” McLaughlin said.

The use of Guantanamo Bay for immigration detention, which is supposed to be civil and not punitive in nature, has alarmed Democrats and civil rights advocates. The Democrats have also denounced the costs involved in turning Guantanamo Bay into an immigration detention centre.

The Department of Defence told Congress in May that as of April 8, it had spent US$21 million transporting detainees to Guantanamo Bay.

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.