7 ms·

As I understand it, nobody wants to keep gitmo open, the issue is that the remaining prisoners have nowhere to go. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/

• FpUser 4y ago
  Well they should be accepted into US then.
  • SllX 4y ago
    Back under the Obama Administration they tried exactly that. It didn't pan out as no State wanted them and no Senator wanted to be the one to tell their constituents "we'll accept terrorists in our borders" Federal prison system or not. Here's the current list if you want to dig deeper into it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_detainees_at_Guantanamo_Bay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_detainees_at_G...
    • kelseyfrog 4y ago
      There is an interesting workaround in housing them at the District of Columbia Jail. The DC Jail being located outside of any state, wouldn't have the problem of the state or senators being held accountable by constituents as DC isn't a state nor does it have any senators.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      • SllX 4y ago
        Technically true but you’re forgetting about the 4 Senators from Virginia and Maryland and the DC government that Congress has setup. They might not be directly answerable to DC residents but they’re sure as hell answerable to the people that live around DC and they still have to work in the same city as DC residents live. Less political power doesn’t mean zero political power.
        • kelseyfrog 4y ago
          I feel like I have something to learn, but the equivalent would be as if the CT and MA senators were upset if RI decided to house the prisoners? (ignoring the politics inside RI completely)
          • SllX 4y ago
            If Rhode Island were offering to hold them in its own State prison system, MA & CT wouldn’t have a say in the holding of prisoners, although they could maybe make the transfer messy. DC is not a separate sovereign from the Federal government, the DC government exists as an administrative convenience for Congress in the guise of self-government; which is to say the interests of DC and the White House are legally subordinate to the interests of the Senators and Representatives of the 50 States. The Federal Prison system like all aspects of the Federal government are subject to Senatorial review and while technically you only need enough votes, not necessarily the home Senators approval, the Senate does like to remain collegial and so there’s some things they don’t do unto each other when there’s a Presidential agenda to hold up instead, like at the time: Obama’s. Every Federal penitentiary is in some Senator’s State, and given how controversial it was to put militant combatants anywhere near, let alone through the United States criminal justice system, it’s not happening. Technically, if Congress wanted to house foreign terrorists in the DC city jail, there wouldn’t be anything that could legally hold up an Act of Congress to do so. They’re not motivated nor interested enough to do so, and a city jail isn’t the best place when there’s a Federal Supermax over in Colorado and Guantanamo Bay over in Cuba. It’s not that legally we can’t, it’s just whatever political benefits there are to it are outweighed by political risks to individual members of Congress. The prisoner population of Gitmo is a problem nobody wants, and keeping them there is as good a reason as any to maintain sovereignty in the area in the face of a hostile foreign government.
  • pavlov 4y ago
    They can’t because Republican Congress during Obama’s presidency passed a law to prevent this.
    • throw0101c 4y ago
      * https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/dec/20/joe-biden/congress-put-roadblocks-front-efforts-close-gitmo-/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/dec/20/joe-biden/... * https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/congress-overwhelmingly-votes-to-block-guantanamo-closure/ https://theintercept.com/2015/11/10/congress-overwhelmingly-...
• cies 4y ago
  Did they even have a fair trial? I always saw gitmo as a modern US gulag.
  • coeneedell 4y ago
    Not arguing for gitmo’s continued existence, but I would point out that the gulag system was a primary tool of oppression in the Soviet Union, and an estimated 18M soviet citizens were sent there. Over the course of Guantanamo’s existence under 1000 men and boys have been extrajudicially detained and tortured there. Expanding this well known data by an order of magnitude (plus a little) gives a conservative estimate of 50000 individuals extrajudicially detained under post 9/11 foreign policy (just a guess at totals based on roughly how many of these prisons were built in the bush era).
    • AlecSchueler 4y ago
      The amount of people affected doesn't change the abstract nature of the thing, which is what the comparison tests on.
      • tablespoon 4y ago
        > The amount of people affected doesn't change the abstract nature of the thing, which is what the comparison tests on. Actually it kind of does, a pretty important quality of a "gulag" is the scale, and another was its domestic focus. Also, the comparison also fails because (I understand) a major goal of the gulag system was the acquisition of slave labor. So on the one hand, you have a massive prison system used for domestic oppression, imprisoning citizens in physically lethal conditions and exploited for slave labor. On the other hand you have a much smaller prison, exclusively housing foreigners, used for no profitable labor of any kind. If you don't pay attention to the details, you can make any comparison you want, but they'll be worthless comparisons.
        • AlecSchueler 4y ago
          Yes, I see what you're saying, but I think it depends which details are being highlighted. In this case the metaphor was based on the commonality of detention without trial. Of course it's not a perfect one for one; they're not literally gulags, but there are elements which are shared and I think those are what the person was trying to highlight.
• nhchris 4y ago
  There are ~10 million illegal immigrants in the US [1], and it is the policy of many "sanctuary" state and city governments to sabotage any federal deportation efforts. But immigration law is suddenly strict and implacable for these 35? [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthorized-immigrant-population-2017/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/us-unauthor...
  • flaviut 4y ago
    Reading the linked article, a law was passed early in Obama's term to prevent them from moving any of those prisoners to American soil. The legation was created to intentionally frustrate Obama's promise to close the prison.
    • amanaplanacanal 4y ago
      Congress would have to change the law. That would be hard enough by itself, but with the new House of Representatives I doubt anything will be accomplished for the next couple years.
      • hgsgm 4y ago
        It's unbecoming to exclusively blame Republicans for bipartisan decisions. Democrats in Congress love when you do that. A great example is when the Democrats pretended to oppose the 2017 tax reform law and then refused to repeal it when they had the majority and Presidency.
    • phpisthebest 4y ago
      The very nature of "illegal" immigration is that is illegal... so who does having another law prevent this illegal immigration...
      • hgsgm 4y ago
        "Illegap immigration" is a slang term. Immigration cannot be illegal. Only behaviors after immigration can be illlegal under domestic law. The US can take actions against immigrants, How can the US pass a law that exclusively binds to foreigners in a foreign country? That violates sovereignty.
• cies 4y ago
  > nobody wants to keep gitmo open, the issue is that the remaining prisoners have nowhere to go. nobody is not really nobody then. clearly the prisoners want it closed. closing gitmo it admitting error: those who do not want to admit error are the ones who want to keep it open. apart from them, it's really nobody.
  • dahfizz 4y ago
    Closing gitmo could just as easily be presented as a success. "We won the war on terror, so we don't need gitmo anymore." It's all propaganda either way.
    • cies 4y ago
      All im saying: some want to keep gitmo open or it would be closed already. Once it will be closed it will be presented as someone success: suuuure.
• pvaldes 4y ago
  This is just a cheap excuse. If they are guilty, any other jail in the country would work perfectly If they are found innocent in a trial, they should be at their home with a compensation. If this is not possible they could be offered the citizenship as a way to repair the injustice after a careful examination of each case. One case at a time My bet would be that that keeping opened guantanamo with a stream of taxes is making somebody, somewhere really rich
  • tootie 4y ago
    Several state governors pushed laws banning the transfer of terrorists into their prisons to prevent this.
    • pvaldes 4y ago
      How do they know if somebody detained forever without a trial is a terrorist?
      • harvey9 4y ago
        Anyone transferred from Guantanamo to another prison will be deemed a terrorist - it's a political issue not a legal one.
      • nradov 4y ago
        They don't know that, but there is really zero political upside for any state governor to accept the transfer of any of those prisoners. It's not their problem.
        • pvaldes 4y ago
          Then the problem is that the organizations "call to close", instead to join and "lobby to close". Guantanamo is a security hazard for the image of US just because it exists.
  • TheCleric 4y ago
    > If they are guilty, any other jail in the country would work perfectly In theory you are 100% correct. In practice this would require authorization from Congress, and would never get passed for fear of having to campaign against "So-and-so put terrorists in your backyard." It's a perverse NIMBYism.