More than 20 years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the onset of the war on terror, policymakers are still debating the need to house suspected terrorists at a U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Opened in January 2002 under then-President George W. Bush, the infamous detention center has been the source of much conflict. Proponents have argued that Guantanamo was and still is needed to protect Americans’ safety, while detractors question the facility’s practice of detaining individuals without judicial oversight and the legacy of controversial interrogation techniques that have violated the Geneva Conventions. Some Guantanamo detainees who have been housed at the facility since it first opened are only now in pretrial proceedings nearly 20 years later.
At a December 2021 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, retired Maj. Gen. Michael Lehnert, who was tasked with building the first Guantanamo Bay detention facility in 2002, testified about some of the ostensibly unforeseen consequences of the detention center. “The speed of Guantanamo’s creation and the urgency to gain information had bad consequences,” Lehnert said at the hearing. “The legal ambiguities that make Guantanamo an attractive choice for some policymakers set up extra challenges for the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who must execute those policies.” He added that “the subsequent decision to subject detainees to enhanced interrogation techniques and to avoid application of the Geneva Conventions, except when it suited us, cost us international support and aided our enemies.”
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) echoed Lehnert’s concerns when arguing on the Senate floor to close the Guantanamo facility on its 20th anniversary this past January. Durbin, referred to the detention center as a “legal black hole” for individuals who are sent there and said Guantanamo’s existence is often used as a recruitment tool. “It is a symbol of our failure to hold terrorists accountable and our failure to honor the sacrifices of our service members,” Durbin said. “These failures should not be passed on to another generation; they should end with the Biden administration.”
President Biden promised to close Guantanamo during the 2020 presidential campaign, but his efforts have been thwarted by Congress. Lawmakers included language in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act prohibiting the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. to resolve their cases.
Biden is not the first president who has tried to close Guantanamo. Former President Barack Obama also vowed to close the detention center but was repeatedly blocked by Congress, which denied funding to transfer detainees to the U.S. to stand trial. The Obama administration was able, however, to transfer roughly 200 detainees to other countries, bringing the total number of detainees at the facility down to about 40.
Before taking office, former President Donald Trump promised to keep Guantanamo open, appealing to conservatives who typically support maintaining the detention center as a national security tool. This argument became louder after the 2021 U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to a resurgence of the Taliban’s power.
“Twenty years after 9/11, the Taliban is back in charge,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said at the December Senate Judiciary hearing, adding that at least five people now in the Taliban government are former Guantanamo detainees. “And we’re talking about releasing people. This is nuts,” he added. A 2019 report from the Director of National Intelligence found that 17% of released Guantanamo detainees re-engage in terrorist activities.
In May 2021, Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and seven other Republicans sent a letter to Biden urging him to keep Guantanamo open. “We anticipate your team is also developing a clear path forward to maintain GTMO operations, which are supported by a bipartisan congressional majority and most Americans,” the lawmakers wrote. “While there were reasonable arguments for transferring and repatriating some low-risk detainees under your predecessors, we all agree that relocating the remaining 40 individuals or closing the facility would create an unnecessary risk.”
In January 2022, the Biden administration approved the release of five Guantanamo detainees, none of whom was ever charged with war crimes. That brought the number of detainees approved for transfer up to 18. The U.S. government will have to find countries to accept these detainees. Meanwhile, the debate around whether to keep the detention center open is likely to continue.
For background, see the January 2012 issue of International Debates on “Prosecuting Suspected Terrorists.”
