Prohibiting the Transfer of Any Detainee At United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill that would block all transfers out of Guantanamo for the remainder of the year or until the end of the President's current term.

This bill would, for the first time ever, impose a complete ban on all transfers out of Guantanamo. Not only would the bill block all transfers of Guantanamo detainees to the United States, even for purposes of prosecution in Federal court, but it would also ban the resettlement or repatriation of detainees cleared by the United States for transfer to foreign countries.

The bill would be effective until the earlier of January 21, 2017, or the effective date of the next National Defense Authorization Act.

To quote the ACLU: ``This bill violates the bedrock constitutional prohibition on Congress passing any legislation that violates the Constitution's Bill of Attainder Clause.''

In effect, it finds all the inmates at Guantanamo guilty of something unspecified, without trial, and sentences them to life without parole. That is what this bill does, along with the other series of bills. But by saying you can't transfer anybody anywhere, you are saying they must remain there indefinitely whether they have been tried or not, whether they have been found guilty or not, whether our own experts think they are a threat to the United States or not. Even if we find that someone is factually not guilty of any act of terrorism or anything else and we have no right to hold them, we still cannot release them.

By what right do we claim such a power? Since when is it okay for Members of Congress to put people in jail and keep them there who are not guilty of anything?

How can an American legislative body pass a provision that says we will hold someone in jail forever not only without trial, but even if we have determined that he is innocent of everything?

That is the basic argument here. This bill, the idea that we will keep people in jail forever without their having been found guilty of anything, without their having been tried, it makes a mockery of the American Constitution. It makes a mockery of all our pretenses to stand for liberty.

It makes a mockery of habeas corpus. This would even say that if someone were granted a writ of habeas corpus, he could not be released even if a Court granted him a writ of habeas corpus. Plainly unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.

I will say one other thing on a completely different level. This expires either when we pass the next NDAA or when the next President takes office. It says, in effect, this President is not really our President, for all practical purposes, for every practical purpose. He was elected by the American people 4 years ago, but we don't like him, so we are going to say he can't do certain things that his successor can do. We are going to put something in writing only for this President.

Now, if this said this expires when the next NDAA is passed or it expires a year from now or whenever, that would be one thing. But this says the NDAA or when the next President takes office. In other words, very much like the Senate is doing with Judge Garland. We don't trust the President. Maybe we don't. That is a political decision, but it is not a right decision.

We don't trust the President to act as President. We repudiate the judgment the American people made in the last election. We say that, for certain purposes, his term has expired and we will wait for the next President.

That also is pernicious and against our constitutional values. On every level, this bill is probably unconstitutional and certainly immoral, and I oppose it.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, we keep hearing that the people of Guantanamo are the worst of the worst, that they are very dangerous, and that their release would pose a threat to the United States. Some are, it is true. Some are probably the worst of the worst, but some aren't. Some are people who were picked up by mistake. Some are people who were sold for a bounty.

If you go into a wild place like Afghanistan and you let the word out that we will pay $5,000 for a terrorist and the McCoys are fighting the Hatfields, the McCoys will turn in a Hatfield and say that he is a terrorist. Some of that happened.

It is our job not to keep everybody in jail for life but to figure out who is who: who is the worst of the worst; who is innocent; who is there because of a mistake.

Release those who are innocent; release those who do not pose a threat; and release those who didn't do anything. Simply getting up and repeating time after time on this floor that the people there are the worst of the worst doesn't make it true.

What kind of a system of justice or anything else is it where you say: We are going to hold forever, with no trial, people who we have already determined to pose no threat to the United States, who we have already determined have done nothing wrong, but we are going to hold them in jail forever because some of them are bad people--no trial, no proceeding, hold them in jail forever?

By what right would we do that? How do we appear to all the countries and to all the people that we are trying to appeal to, saying our way is the rule of law, go with our way, don't go with the Taliban, we are fair to people, they are not, and then we have people in jail forever with no hope of release, with no trial, no proceeding, nothing? That is what this bill is.

This bill is un-American in the extreme. It is counterproductive because it gives the Taliban and everybody else the propaganda against us that we are a bunch of hypocrites, which we are if we pass bills like this, and we shouldn't pass it.

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