House Speaker Paul Ryan’s office made clear Tuesday that despite the Obama administration’s unwavering commitment to presenting Congress with a plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, it is dead on arrival if the plan includes transferring detainees to the homeland.
“Any plan to close Guantanamo by relocating detainees to the U.S. is a non-starter,” read a statement from the Wisconsin Republican’s office. “Congress has already spoken many, many times on this issue,” it continued, referring to provisions in legislation, most recently the year-end catchall appropriations bill, prohibiting the administration from spending money to move prisoners to, or construct facilities in, the U.S.
“Democrats first included language in the annual defense bill prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to American soil in 2009,” the statement continued. “These provisions have been reaffirmed annually on a bipartisan basis.”
Obama instructed Pentagon planners to draft a proposal for closing the facility for congressional consideration months ago. Obama reportedly shot down their first effort as too expensive and sent them back to the drawing board.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told CNN on Sunday that the new plan is finished.
“I’ve made a proposal for the president and he has indicated that he’s going to submit that to the Congress,” Carter said.
Obama has pledged to seek congressional approval before discussing following through on the executive order he issued his first day in office to close the facility opened by President George W. Bush.
“I think it’s far preferable if I can get stuff done with Congress,” Obama said during a December press conference.
The Pentagon has transferred 21 of the detainees cleared for release to third-party countries recently, but Carter acknowledged that a subset of the remaining prisoners is too dangerous to release.
“[T]here are people in Gitmo who are so dangerous that we cannot transfer them to the custody of another government no matter how much we trust that government,” Carter said. “I can’t assure the president that it would be safe to do that.”
“So the reality is that this portion of the Gitmo population has to be incarcerated somewhere, has to be detained somewhere,” Carter continued. “So if we’re going to close Gitmo, which I think would be a good thing to do on balance, I would prefer not to leave this to the next secretary of defense and the next president. We need to find another place; [which] would have to be in the United States.”
Ryan’s office said the administration should instead focus on meeting next month’s deadline for presenting lawmakers with a strategy to combat the Islamic State.
“Yet rather than focus on a myriad of more pressing national security issues, the president continues to waste time deliberating how to bring more deadly terrorists to our shores,” the release stated.
