Congress bans moving Gitmo prisoners to US

The House passed it the previous week on a similarly lopsided 370-58 vote, signaling Mr. Obama would have had a hard time sustaining his veto if he’d picked a fight.

Currently, there are 112 detainees still in the Guantanamo detention center, among whom 53 are eligible for transfer to other countries.

The Pentagon is expected to unveil a long-awaited plan this week detailing how it would close the facility despite fierce resistance in the Republican-led Congress. To date, 657 have been released or transferred, 125 of them under the Obama administration. By the Miami Herald’s count, there are 27 of these “forever prisoners”. The legislation permitting transfers to the US could come separate from the NDAA, the Pentagon said.

“Hassan said she would consider closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison, but only in a context that ensures the protection of USA citizens”, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

Obama has pledged to close the Guantanamo facility before leaving office in 2017.

Minutes after approving the defense policy bill, the Senate also passed its first spending bill for 2016, clearing a measure to fund the Veterans Affairs Department and construction within the Defense Department.

“I expect he will not have a specific plan and it won’t be satisfactory”, The Wall Street Journal quoted McCain as saying.

“Keep them at Guantanamo, which is a top-rank detention facility”. “The president, in his capacity as commander in chief, has the exclusive authority to make tactical military decisions”.

The ODIHR report concluded that many released detainees are unable to return to their country of origin because of the threat they would face even worse human rights abuses. “The answer is an emphatic no”. “I’m not aware of any ongoing effort to devise a strategy using only the president’s executive authority”, he said. Nevertheless, the option has not been taken off of the table. This story has been updated to include Josh Earnest’s statement that Obama would not veto the bill.

New Hampshire Democrat Maggie Hassan dodged questions about her support for President Obama’s plan to close the terrorist detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Monday evening.

The U.S. Senate passed a revised version of the National Defense Authorization Act Tuesday, according to CNBC.

In the end, the president is expected to sign the NDAA, locking those obstacles into law. Kelly Ayotte said Tuesday, but if he issues an executive order to bring its prisoners to the United States, she believes he would be “violating the law”. “The president feels strongly about that”. N.D.A.A.is an abbreviation for the bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act. “But that certainly does not reflect a change in our position or the intensity of our position about the need to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and the need for Congress to actually cooperate with us in doing so”.

Six Republicans did not vote.

Just three senators voted against the bill: Sens.

Since it was opened in January 2002, 780 prisoners have been held at Guantanamo.