Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar", said on Wednesday that the Trump administration would expand the already existing detention facility at Guantanamo and that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency would run it.
"President Trump’s decision to use Guantanamo - global symbol and site of lawlessness, torture, and racism - to house immigrants should horrify us all," Vince Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), said in a statement shared with Middle East Eye.
For the past two decades, the CCR has been one of the leading organisations representing detainees held at Guantanamo.
"The order - directing the DOD and DHS prepare to hold 30,000 people - sends a clear message: migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports," Warren said.
"The Center for Constitutional Rights has challenged the US government’s use of Guantanamo in all its incarnations, and we, along with our partners, will do so again."
Trump said the detention facility, which currently can hold around 400 people, would be used to "detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people. Some of them are so bad we don't even trust the countries to hold them because we don't want them coming back, so we're going to send them out to Guantanamo. This will double our capacity immediately, right? And, tough."
Trump signed a memorandum in an attempt to solidify the move. The memorandum didn't include a set number of migrants but called for the prison to be expanded.
The detention centre at Guantanamo Bay was set up in 2002 by former President George W Bush and was used to house more than 800 Muslim men accused of being linked to militant groups like al-Qaeda.
There are 15 detainees remaining in the prison after the majority were released without being charged with a crime.
Former President Barack Obama vowed to close the prison when he came into office, as did Joe Biden. However, the two Democratic presidents only managed to reduce the prison's population.
Trump has repeatedly vowed to keep the prison open. The prison became a symbol of American human rights abuses during the US-led "war on terror", with detainees being subject to a range of torture techniques, including waterboarding and sexual torture, according to rights groups.
"Guantanamo Bay has been the site of torture, indefinite detention without charge or trial and other unlawful practices by the US government," Amnesty International said in a statement.
"President Trump should be using his authority to finally close the prison there, not re-purposing the facility for offshore immigration detention."
Before it was used as a prison camp for Muslim detainees, Guantanamo Bay was used to detain refugees and asylum seekers attempting to enter the US.
A report by the International Refugee Assistance Project found that migrants were "detained indefinitely in prison-like conditions without access to the outside world", often "with little to no transparency or accountability".