U.S. Ready for Massive Influx at Gitmo

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, Cuba — The U.S. military has expanded plans for a pop-up tent city to shelter migrants in case of a Caribbean boat crisis, spending more than $55 million to prepare a safe haven for up to 45,000 boat people.

Since Fidel Castro took ill and ceded power of Cuba to his brother Raúl, the Bush administration has been preparing for a 10,000-person tent city.

In May, the Navy hired a Jacksonville contractor to build cement block buildings with 525 toilets and 248 showers on an empty slice of the base. The military could rapidly erect tents around the site. The buildings should be completed next summer at a cost of $16.5 million.

Now, under the expansion, the military has invited military contractors to bid on a $40 million project that would build a second tent city on the base for 35,000 migrants in need of humanitarian relief.

The Navy put out the bid in recent months, said Marine Capt. Manuel Carpio, the officer here assigned to plan for the crisis and coordinate with various U.S. and international agencies.

No boat crisis is on the horizon: Experts tracking Cuban migration of late say the majority of those fleeing the Castro-run side of the island have shunned the heavily patrolled Florida Straits for the western passage to Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

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 rickety rafts trying to reach South Florida.

Source: MH