A group of Republican senators on Tuesday announced legislation that would bar President Obama from releasing detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the rest of his term in office.
The bill is a response to Obama’s push to bypass Congress and empty the prison by executive order, a challenge that was bound to provoke a response now that the GOP controls both chambers.
“Now is not the time to be emptying Guantanamo,” said Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., lead sponsor of the measure, citing last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris.
The bill would bar the release or transfer of any detainees judged to be medium- or high-risk — the vast majority of those who remain — and requires greater justification for any other release or transfer. It also would bar transfers of any Guantanamo prisoner to Yemen, home country of the largest single group of remaining detainees.
Only 127 remain of the 779 people sent to Guantanamo since the prison opened on Jan. 11, 2002 — the smallest population ever. Other than nine who died in custody, the rest have been repatriated, transferred to other countries or freed.
The administration has released or transferred 39 suspected terrorists from the facility over the past 18 months, and officials have promised more to come. The recent flow from the prison comes after a period of more than a year in which no one left.
“In over six years this administration has never presented to the Congress of the United States a concrete and coherent plan to handle the detainee issue,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Just last month, McCain, the new Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, told CNN he would be willing to work with Obama to close Guantanamo. But on Tuesday, he and another supporter of the legislation, Sen. Lindsey Graham, said the president has ignored concerns about the risks posed by freed detainees, especially in light of new attacks such as the one in Paris and the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria over the past year.
“The president does not appreciate how the world is devolving into chaos,” said Graham, R-S.C. “He is playing in his own mind like the war is over.”
Administration officials say each detainee’s case has been reviewed carefully by the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, Justice and State, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Unanimous agreement is required for a transfer or release, officials said.
But that hasn’t eased the concerns of those who say the risk of releasing any hard-core jihadi right now is too great, citing the cases of those who have returned to the fight.
According to the latest report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued in September, 107 of 620 detainees released from Guantanamo, or 17.3 percent, had been confirmed as returning to terrorism as of July 15, and another 77, or 12.4 percent, were suspected of having done so.
