President Obama again pushed Congress to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night.
It was the third time the president has pushed Congress for the facility’s closure in his annual address, with the first one in 2009 following his election.
In Tuesday’s speech, he pushed that the continued transfers of detainees from Guantanamo has raised the cost of detention per prisoner to $3 million apiece and emphasized that he is dedicated to its closure.
“It makes no sense to spend three million dollars per prisoner to keep open a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit,” Obama said. “We’ve worked responsibly to cut the population of [Guantanamo] in half. Now it’s time to finish the job. I will not relent in my determination to shut it down.”
