President Obama issued an executive order in his first week in office mandating an immediate review of all detentions at the facility, and its closure within one year. He ordered the National Security Council to complete a review of the facility and the “current state of play” that he inherited from the Trump administration, as White House press secretary Jen Psaki put it.įrustration over the inability to close down the prison camp was a hallmark of the Obama White House. He prioritized ending GITMO soon after taking office. Still, if both bills pass Congress, the move would accelerate Mr. A showdown between the two Democrat-run chambers is possible when they take up the bills later this month. While House Democrats were successful in blocking the amendments, the Senate-passed version of the NDAA kept the transfer prohibitions on the books. Giving the option to President Biden I think would mean that this is actually going to happen.” This would lead to people being transferred here. “This isn’t an optional thing, this would lead to closing Guantanamo.
“No one should make any mistake about this,” Mr. Doug Lamborn, Colorado Republican, said that the new policy would almost certainly mean President Biden will transfer terrorist detainees to federal prisons in the U.S. Turner’s amendment failed in a party-line vote. It is simply my argument that in the United States of America right now in detention facilities all across the country, we have people every little bit as dangerous being kept including terrorists who have killed people.” “Let me be 100% clear, the sum of these people are incredibly dangerous,” Mr. The committee chairman, Washington state Democrat Adam Smith, said that keeping detainees offshore in the “most expensive incarceration facility in the world” does not make financial sense. “They are going to be all over in a suburb near you.” “And that is what’s going to happen,” he said.
“Imagine that outrage, not if they are appearing in Afghanistan running the Taliban, but if they appear in a suburb near you.” Turner told his colleagues on the Armed Services Committee before the vote on his amendment.
“I hope everyone understands that throughout the country there is unbelievable outrage that there are individuals that were held at Guantanamo that are now appearing on their TV sets that are now supporting terrorist organizations, supporting the Taliban, leading the Taliban,” Mr.