Guantanamo Detainees

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, we understand that in just a few minutes the President is set to make an announcement on the secure facility in Guantanamo. In light of that, colleagues should consider the following things we have heard in recent weeks.

General Dunford has spoken of the need for our military to take more aggressive action against the ISIL group that is operating inside Libya.

General Campbell has spoken of the need to retain a sizable enough force in Afghanistan to accomplish the dual missions of both conducting counterterrorism operations and training and advising the Afghan security forces.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter has issued a budget request that seeks funding for the weapons systems and programs we will need to balance against the regional ambitions of China and Russia.

In other words, some of the most senior national security officials within this administration are already working to better position the next President for the national security challenges we will face in 2017 and beyond. Yet President Obama seems to remain captured on one matter by a campaign promise he made in 2008--his ill-considered crusade to close the secure detention facility at Guantanamo.

Today we received the descriptions of where the President would like to detain terrorists within the United States--though not any actual proposed locations--despite the fact that it would be illegal under current law to transfer foreign terrorists at Guantanamo into the United States. This isn't a case where the President can even try to justify the use of some pen-and-phone strategy by claiming Congress failed to act. To the contrary, Congress acted over and over again in a bipartisan way to reject the President's desire to transfer dangerous terrorists to communities in the United States. The President signed all these prohibitions and his Attorney General recently confirmed that it is illegal for the President to transfer any of these terrorists into the United States.

We will review President Obama's plan, but since it includes bringing dangerous terrorists to facilities in U.S. communities, he should know that the bipartisan will of Congress has already been expressed against that proposal.

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