Thursday, November 12, 2015
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley issued the following statement regarding President Barack Obama's possible attempt to move enemy combatants housed at Guantanamo Bay to U.S. soil. Congress has passed and the President has signed into law several bills that restrict any move to transfer these detainees to the United States. Most recently, on Tuesday, the Senate passed and sent to the president the National Defense Authorization Act for 2016, which maintains those restrictions, on a 91-3 vote. Grassley has also pressed for the Obama administration to release the legal analysis done by the Justice Department that authorized the release of five senior Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay in June 2014 in exchange for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl without the legally required 30-day notice to Congress. Grassley's June 5, 2014, letter is here. The Obama administration's response is here. After an unresponsive reply, Grassley is renewing and expanding his request for information about the Department's role in facilitating the release of those terrorists. That letter can be found here.
"President Obama's pledge to shutter the detention facility at Guantanamo was always based on the notion that softening America's image abroad would somehow soften our enemies' resolve. The headlines every day remind us that's not the way it is. If anything, as a direct result of the president's national security policies, our homeland is in more danger now than when he took office.
"There are a number of serious concerns with moving hardened terrorists to U.S. soil. These include questions surrounding any additional legal, immigration and constitutional rights that terrorists will be afforded by such a move, as well as the obvious public safety threat that would come from permanently housing them in U.S. communities. Those who remain at Guantanamo include the worst of the worst -- for example, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. President Obama has admitted that many of them are too dangerous to be transferred or released. Officials in New York refused to house some of them even temporarily for a trial. And many of their home countries won't even take them back.
"Reports have suggested that President Obama may try to go around Congress if he can't secure a change in the law that would permit these terrorists to be brought to the United States. If so, the President's effort to close the Guantanamo Bay facility will combine two of the worst aspects of his presidency -- his naiveté in dealing with our enemies and his lawlessness when dealing with Congress. This is reminiscent of when he swapped five senior Taliban commanders from Guantanamo for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl without notifying Congress in advance, which the non-partisan Government Accountability Office later determined was unlawful. I've been asking to see the flawed advice that the Department of Justice provided in connection with the Bergdahl swap for over a year now, and after receiving another inadequate response, I've renewed and expanded my request for information.
"In the days following one of our most sacred days of honoring millions of U.S. veterans, including thousands from Iraq and Afghanistan, the President should reconsider placing the fulfillment of a mistaken campaign promise over the safety of the American people and respect for the rule of law."
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