National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Smith-Moran-Nadler amendment, which provides a six-part plan for closing Gitmo.

The amendment will remove the existing limitations on transfers, strike the current requests for construction at Gitmo, and end funding for the facility on December 31, 2014.

The time to close Guantanamo is now. It is a stain on our national honor. We are holding 166 people at Gitmo, 86 of whom have been cleared for release, that is to say they have been found guilty of nothing and judged not to pose any danger. There is no reason and no right for us to hold them further.

Mr. Chairman, I wonder which of our colleagues doesn't believe in the American system of justice. I wonder which one of us does not trust our own American court. I wonder who among us does not believe in the Bill of Rights, who does not believe in the right to counsel or that people should be presumed innocent until proven guilty. What we have at Gitmo is a system that is an affront to those beliefs and to America.

In the last decade, we have begun to let go of our freedoms bit by bit with each new executive order, each new court decision and, yes, each new act of Congress. We have begun giving away our rights to privacy, a right to our day in court when the government harms us; and with this legislation, we are continuing down the path of destroying the right to be free from imprisonment without due process of law.

I want to commend the gentleman from Washington and the gentleman from Virginia for fighting to close the detention facility at Guantanamo.

The language in this bill without our amendment prohibits moving any detainees into the United States and guarantees that we will continue holding people indefinitely, people who are not necessarily terrorists and who we only suspect to be terrorists and have not had a day in court to prove they are or are not terrorists. We will continue to hold them indefinitely without charge, contrary to every tradition this country stands for, contrary to due process and civil rights.

Because of this momentous challenge to the founding principles of the United States, that no person may be deprived of liberty without due process of law--and certainly not indefinitely without due process of law--we must close the detention facilitate at Gitmo now in order to restore our national honor.

They will have no additional constitutional rights. The Supreme Court ruled that they have the same constitutional rights at Guantanamo as they do here.

We must close this facility and restore our national honor. Support this amendment.

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