GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba -- The U.S. military has expanded plans for a tent encampment to shelter migrants in the event of a Caribbean boat crisis -- now planning on paper a safe haven for up to 45,000 people.
Since Fidel Castro became ill last year and ceded power in Cuba to his brother Raúl, the Bush administration has been preparing for a theoretical humanitarian relief mission that would accommodate 10,000 people. It could be used for people fleeing a political crisis as well as a natural disaster.
In May, the Navy hired a Jacksonville contractor to build concrete buildings with 525 toilets and 248 showers on an empty corner of the Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, base. The military could quickly put up tents, if needed, around the site. The buildings should be completed by next summer at a cost of $16.5 million.
Now, under the expansion outlined on Wednesday, the military is planning on paper for a second phase that would shelter another 35,000 migrants.
No boat crisis is on the horizon: Experts tracking Cuban migration say the majority of those fleeing the island have avoided the heavily patrolled Florida Straits in favor of the western passage to Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
CRISIS IN 1990S
But the planning is for a scenario on the scale of the 1994-95 crisis, when first Haitians and then Cubans, fleeing instability in their homelands, set out to sea in rafts trying to reach South Florida.
That migration crisis so overwhelmed the naval base that intercepted Cubans were sheltered in tents on an abandoned airfield and overflow rafters were housed in tents on a scrubby nine-hole golf course. In waves, more than 60,000 refugees lived in tents on the base then.
Marine Capt. Manuel Carpio, the officer assigned to plan for the crisis and coordinate with various American and international agencies, said Wednesday that the U.S. government was seeking bids for an estimated $40 million project that would expand the infrastructure to accommodate 35,000 people in a portion of the base called Leeward North.
COST ESTIMATE
On Thursday, Army Lt. Col. Ed Bush, a Guantánamo spokesman, said no contracts had been put out to bid -- and the estimated figure for the next phase based on a recent site analysis was $110 million.
''The military is considering the possibility of establishing a Leeward North site to house additional [35,000] migrants,'' he said by e-mail. ``The cost estimate of $110 million, not $40 million, was determined via a site survey conducted by the military.''
But, he said, the decision on whether to go forward, including to seek bids, would not be made until after Phase I is finished next summer.
''Bottom line, there are plans for Leeward North; it remains to be seen if it will ever need to be executed,'' Lt. Col. Bush added.
Either way, several U.S. agencies are preparing provisional plans for a similar military interdiction mission based on the lessons learned in the 1990s crisis.
Those plans call for processing people captured at sea, first through the Department of Homeland Security to check for criminals, then through the International Organization for Migration, which assists in foreign resettlement and repatriation.
The base currently has a huge fenced compound that could serve as a small tent city for the first 400 people from any Caribbean country intercepted at sea. That operation would be run by Homeland Security, which already shelters up to about 40 asylum seekers on the base at a time.
Then, the U.S. military that now runs the prison camps for suspected al Qaeda terrorists and other captives would swing into action and build a tent camp -- far from the detention and interrogation center that sits on a bluff overlooking the Caribbean on the 45-square-mile base.
Metal shipping containers with cots and tents for any potential first wave of rafters already have arrived.
The effort to build an infrastructure for a migrant tent city is separate from another $10 million tent city now rising on a different portion of the base. That tent city would be part of a legal compound surrounding two high-security courtrooms and is intended for lawyers, staff members and journalists for any upcoming war on terrorism trials.
NEXT ON SCHEDULE
The next military commission session is scheduled for Nov. 8. It is the arraignment of 21-year-old Canadian captive Omar Khadr, accused of the July 2002 grenade killing of a U.S. Army Special Forces medic in Afghanistan.
