Some Senate Democrats sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday opposing the use of Guantanamo Bay to detain illegal migrants, calling it a threat to civil rights and military readiness.
The letter, written by Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., said U.S. military personnel are "warfighters, not jailers."
"We oppose placing U.S. military and DoD civilian personnel in the legally and morally tenuous position of conducting mass migrant detention operations. Our men and women in uniform are warfighters, not jailers of migrants," read the letter, which The Hill reported was also signed by Sens. Chris Coons, D-Del., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md.
The senators added: "The dramatically expanded use of U.S. military personnel and facilities to support mass detention operations overseas will divert DoD personnel and resources from its core warfighting mission."
The letter also doubted the Trump administration's "will" to treat the illegal migrants humanely.
"Given widespread and well-documented abuse of detainees in DHS and DHS-contracted facilities in the United States, we lack confidence that DHS political leadership has the will or capacity to conduct such detention operations at NS Guantanamo Bay humanely," read the letter, according to The Hill.
The letter follows another that was sent to President Donald Trump on Monday by four Senate Democrats, including Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Dick Durbin, D-Ill. In that letter, Democrats objected to Trump's "illegal and unjustified transfers of noncitizens" to Guantanamo, saying there's "no basis in U.S. immigration law for transferring noncitizens arrested inside the United States to a location outside of the United States for detention prior to or for the purposes of conducting removal proceedings."
Trump last month signed an executive order instructing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security to prepare a migrant facility at Guantanamo with 30,000-person capacity, saying the facility would "detain the worst criminal aliens."
Flights transporting illegal migrants began the first week of February.