MiamiHerald: Hundreds of U.S. forces are rehearsing a migrant crisis this week at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a massive multimillion dollar drill that envisions the United States capturing huge numbers of people in the Caribbean bound for the United States — and how the military, State Department and Homeland Security would collaborate on handling it.
At the Southern Command, Army Col. Lisa Garcia said the military was contributing 400 troops and spending $2.5 million on its portion of the month-long exercise, to include transportation and airlift. It ends Friday.
She said Southcom’s “battle staff” is taking part in the exercise as well as its Public Affairs team. The Miami Herald asked to watch and report on the exercise and was declined. The U.S. military likewise declined to release photos of it.
It’s called Operation Integrated Advance and it “is dedicated to improving our integration with federal and local partners,” the colonel said.
The military has engaged in some sort of annual Guantánamo-related migrant exercise for at least a decade. The Department of Homeland Security participates every other year. This one, however, is the first since the Obama administration withdrew the “wet foot, dry foot” policy of granting legal entry status to visa-less Cubans who manage to arrive on U.S. soil.
Read more
Drill my ass! It’s another invasion planned by the Dems and Castro.
We didn’t drill for it in 94-95. It was the real deal. We brought US Marines onboard to help us with the crowd control. We accumulated hundreds of migrants on our flight deck before bringing them to GTMO. We didn’t get much sleep but we performed tirelessly as you’d expect from your military and given the Secretary’s Award for Outstanding Achievment.