“The problem is that, for more than six years now, the Obama administration has offered no comprehensive plan to responsibly close the Guantanamo detention facility…”
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In a letter, Kansas Attorney General, Derek Schmidt joined state attorneys from Colorado and SC in saying bringing GITMO detainees to their states would create an imminent danger.
The White House has asked the Pentagon to revise a report on how the military would close Guantanamo Bay and transfer inmates to the United States, a U.S. official said Thursday.
“It is part of how they rationalize and justify their demented, sick perpetration of violence on innocent people”, Obama said.
A few lawmakers, including Senator John McCain, a former prisoner of war in the 1960s in Vietnam who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, have said they would sue to block any executive order that attempts to circumvent congressional opposition to closing Guantanamo.
Obama said he still plans on shutting down Guantanamo Bay, despite skepticism from Republicans.
“We are going to go through meticulously, with Congress, what our options are and why we think it should be closed”, he said at the Philippine worldwide Convention Center.
Regardless of when the president’s plan is delivered, with only 14 months left in Obama’s term the administration will likely push to send those 48 to other countries faster.
“Before the attacks, I would have said December, (but) now I don’t know”, the official said. “What we now have instead is the perception of a president rushing to fulfill a political promise”. Like the attorneys general, he said moving prisoners from Guantanamo will compromise the nation’s security and harm its troops.
Despite the existing prohibition in federal law on the use of any funds to “assist” in the transfer of detainees to the US mainland, federal survey teams have recently traveled to locations in Colorado, Kansas and SC, apparently to assess facilities in those states as possible sites for the relocation of Guantanamo detainees. “Agreeing with me that, ‘Oh, the law doesn’t allow that'”.
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In response, Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal guidance to the president, wrote on the blog Lawfare, “Nothing in Lynch’s remarks would preclude the President from later concluding that the transfer restrictions are unconstitutional”. “Several previously released detainees sought refuge with ISIS”.
