Roberts on Potential Transfer of Guantanamo Prisoners to Kansas

Greenwald said Obama “never sought to close Guantánamo in any meaningful sense but rather wanted to relocate it to a less symbolically upsetting location, with its defining injustice fully intact and, worse, institutionalized domestically.” Jerry Moran, R-Kansas, said in a statement.

“At a time when we face relentless threats from the Islamic State, and have yet to hear a strategy to defeat ISIL, it is absurd to hear that the Department of Defense has personnel on the ground at Fort Leavenworth conducting site surveys to advance the President’s proposal that could ultimately result in the transfer of these terrorist to Kansas”, she said in a statement.

Now Brownback is Kansas governor and still opposes the idea. However, if followed through on, Obama’s plan would simply move Guantanamo onto American soil, rather than shut it down. U.S. government officials said last week that a dozen foreign countries have agreed to accept almost half of the men. Congress passed a law that prohibits the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the United States, and the law would have to be changed in order to implement the proposed plan. The possibility of transferring the detainees to civilian facilities is also being analyzed, reports NBC News.

US officials said the objection to freeing Tariq Ba Odah, who is undernourished to the point of starvation, and the decision to challenge his legal gambit outside of public view, are indications that the Obama administration will fight tenaciously to stop detainees from seeking freedom in federal courts, despite Barack Obama’s oft-repeated pledge to close Guantánamo.

Disclosure of the site survey uncorked a new round of not-in-my-backyard press releases reminiscent of the opposition members of Congress mounted in the early years of the Obama administration, when the Pentagon held twice as many captives at the U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

Davis said that there are other sites, in addition to those in Kansas and South Carolina, that the team will visit. About 52 of the 116 current detainees have been cleared for release, however the remaining 64 are considered too unsafe to be released. “I have visited Guantanamo Bay, and I know firsthand that it is the best facility in the world for holding these deadly enemy combatants…” Aamer’s transfer has reportedly been greenlighted by the Justice Department, the State Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

But just one release is expected later this summer. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., recently called unsuitable.

The DoD says Charleston and Leavenworth aren’t the only military sites it will consider.

Six others may one day be charged at the war court, according to internal documents.

The US military prison was set up by the Pentagon after the September 11, 2001, attacks to hold suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.