President Donald Trump announced last week that the Guantanamo Bay military facility in Cuba would be expanded to “provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.”

Trump said in a statement from the White House that the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security should “take all appropriate actions” to hike the capacity of Guantanamo Bay to process illegal aliens and address other “immigration enforcement needs.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview that the facility can accommodate 30,000 illegal aliens, and that the military can “very rapidly” increase the number that can be detained.

“I served there, I know the places where this would happen. Guantanamo has long been a place for migrants,” Hegseth added, noting that tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans were once detained at the facility as they attempted to reach the United States by sea to claim asylum.

“We have an even bigger crisis on our hands right now,” Hegseth continued. “It was mentioned, 7,500 violent illegals have been captured by ICE in the last nine days. God bless them, where do you move them? I tell you what, no one is going to be waiting on the Defense Department.”

Trump announced the policy of detaining illegal aliens at Guantanamo Bay during a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, a piece of legislation named for the Georgia nursing student who was sexually assaulted and murdered by an illegal alien gang member from Venezuela.

The legislation, which marks the first proposal signed by Trump in his second term, requires the detainment of illegal aliens who commit theft, burglary, larceny, and shoplifting offenses, as well as assault of a police officer or any other offenses resulting in serious bodily injury or death.