A key senator pushed for legislation that blocks President Obama from moving Guantanamo Bay detainees to the U.S. and wants to keep the detention facility open.
“These detainees aren’t in Gitmo for parking tickets; they’re there because they want to kill Americans and hate everything that we stand for,” said Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., in the weekly GOP address.
Gardner was pushing for approval of the National Defense Authorization Act, which funds the military. Included in the legislation, which the Senate will vote on next week, is a measure to block Obama from moving detainees to the U.S.
Gardner said he visited the detention center in the spring and noted that closing it means the “Obama administration will accelerate the release or transfer of its prisoners to the United States or abroad. This is simply reckless when the Middle East is growing increasingly unstable.”
“Guantanamo Bay presents the opportunity to capitalize on our intelligence-gathering capabilities when additional terrorists are captured and detained,” Gardner said. “Closing its doors may mean the loss of an important tool that could potentially prevent future attacks.”
Obama sent a plan to Congress back in February to close the detention facility, a long-time goal of his administration. So far Congress has not acted on the plan.
Obama said back in February that the facility “does not advance our national security — it undermines it.”
He added that it drains military resources, with nearly $450 million spent in 2015 to keep it running. “Guantanamo harms our partnerships with allies and other countries whose cooperation we need against terrorism,” the president said.
The Senate is expected to vote on the defense bill next week.
Corrected: An earlier version of this article incorrectly attributed these comments to Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. We regret the error.
