Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I have two amendments. The first strikes section 527; the second strikes section 528. I had to put them in as two separate amendments because only one amendment pends at a time, but they are really together.

Sections 527 and 528, which my amendment would strike, restricts the President's authority to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United States for trial.

Mr. Chairman, simply put, it is time to punish Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. In GTMO, he has not been tried, convicted, or punished. Meanwhile, Federal courts have tried, convicted, and punished more than 400 terrorists. None of them have ever escaped from a U.S. prison. No prison where they are located has ever been subjected to an attack.

The only thing my friends who are opposed to closing Guantanamo have on their side is fear. Fear, Mr. Chairman. As they argue against this amendment, they will try to tell us that these men are dangerous and scary, that these men can harm us, that these men are the worst of the worst--and some may be--but these men are already in our custody.

Like so many murderers and terrorists already in prison, they have no power over us. They have been shut off from the outside world for more than a decade.

If there are terrible people in Guantanamo--and I am not denying that there are--then it is time for them to face the consequences of their actions in a U.S. court. And that is the rub. The terrorists that have been prosecuted and sentenced had their day in court and were found guilty.

U.S. Federal courts have successfully tried and convicted criminals and terrorists during times of war and peace for hundreds of years, all while respecting the rights of due process that our Constitution demands.

This leads me to believe that some of my colleagues do not believe in the American system of justice. They do not trust our American courts to do justice. I do not understand why.

Through the centuries, our legal system has kept America safe by putting away dangerous individuals while protecting those who were innocent of the government's charges against them. That is the beauty of our system that has made it the envy of the world.

The principles underpinning the system, the right to due process and to a fair trial, are built into our Constitution and are part of our most basic values. But in order for the system to work, you actually need to get your day in court.

Without our amendment, this bill guarantees that we will continue holding people indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

Even though we suspect that we are holding people who are terrorists, some of whom probably are, in fact, terrorists, none of this has been proven in a court of law. Without this amendment, we will continue to hold them indefinitely without charge, contrary to every tradition this country stands for, contrary to any notion of due process.

The founding principles of the United States, that no person may be deprived of liberty without due process of law and certainly may not be deprived of liberty indefinitely without due process of law, demands that we close the detention facility at Guantanamo.

We must close this facility, try these people, condemn the guilty, place them in supermax facilities, release the innocent, if there are any; and restore our national honor. I urge the support of this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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First of all, almost everything the gentleman just said is not apropos and is wrong.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that the people at Guantanamo have exactly the same constitutional rights--no more and no less--than they would have if brought to the United States. So it has nothing to do with giving constitutional rights to foreign nationals.

Second of all, some of these people were, indeed, captured on foreign battlefields; some were not.

Third of all, maybe they should be tried by military tribunals. But they have been held for 11, 12, 14, 15 years. We can't manage to try them by foreign tribunals. Put them in a Federal court. Try them. Convict them.

Put them in a Federal court, try them, and convict them. If you want to put them in a military tribunal, you can do that, fine. We haven't managed to. But the fact is, by staying in Guantanamo, they don't have any less, fewer, or more constitutional rights than are here. Anyone within the jurisdiction of the United States, according to the Supreme Court, has constitutional rights. We must treat them with due process. All this amendment says is treat them the way the Supreme Court has said we should: try them, condemn them, or find them innocent, as the case may be. Some may be innocent. Many of them are not. Some may be. We should follow our traditions.

Mr. Chairman, I urge the adoption of this amendment so that we can apply American concepts of justice as the Supreme Court has said we must.

We can try them by military tribunal in Guantanamo or in the United States. We can try them in Federal Court. Military tribunals haven't worked. We haven't been able to make them work. Federal courts have worked. We should condemn the guilty and release the innocent, if there are any.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, this is really a continuation of our colloquy from the last amendment since they both seek to do the same thing. Let me just say a couple of things.

Again, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that people in Guantanamo Bay have the same constitutional rights as people in Florida, New York, or Washington, so I do not seek to give people in Guantanamo Bay constitutional rights they do not already have. They have the constitutional rights. That was the Supreme Court decision, I think, in 2009 I think the decision was. They have the constitutional rights. Anyone under the jurisdiction and effective control of the United States has the constitutional rights, so that is not really in question.

What is really in question is: Are we going to honor our obligations? Now, the gentleman says that some of these people are terrible people, that they are murderers. Some of them may be, and some of them are, but some of them may not be. They have not been tried. They ought to be tried.

As the gentleman from Pennsylvania said, we have criticized the Chinese communists, and we have criticized many other nations for holding people in jail indefinitely, for not trying them and for not giving them any kind of due process. These people, like any other human beings, deserve some due process.

Some of them, I am sure, have been terrorists. They ought to be condemned and put in jail forever. Some of them may not be. And some of them were captured on foreign battlefields and some were not. Some of them were simply victims of the Hatfields and the McCoys' feud between two tribes or clans in Afghanistan or wherever, and one clan said: Gee, the Americans are paying a $5,000 bounty, so why don't we tip them off to our enemy and tell them that they are a terrorist. Some of them were victims of that.

The facts ought to come out. Some due process ought to be given. No one ought to be held in jail for life without a trial, without a hearing, and without some due process. That is what we stand for. And simply saying that Americans deserve due process but other people do not, A, it is wrong. Other people do not have constitutional rights, but if they are in the United States, they do. If they are in Guantanamo, they have constitutional rights. The Supreme Court has already said that.

So the question here is: Are we going to bring them to a facility in the United States, a supermax facility? No one has escaped from them. It is cheaper. It saves the taxpayers a lot of money. Give them a military tribunal or a Federal trial and do what is right. That is what is at stake here.

I will say one other thing. Our military has told us time and time again that the stain of Guantanamo, besides being a stain on our honor, is one of the greatest recruiting tools the terrorists have. They point to Guantanamo. They say: Look at those American hypocrites. They are persecuting Muslims. They are persecuting non-Americans.

Well, they have a point. And other people think they have a point, and they get angry. They get radicalized, and they become terrorists against us.

So why not, for the 120-odd people who are still at Guantanamo, the majority of whom have been judged not to pose a threat to this country by our own military authorities, do the right thing? Give them a trial. Throw them in jail for whatever lengthy period of time is indicated if they are guilty. And if they are not, then they ought to be released if they are not guilty of a crime, if they haven't been terrorists. We have to have some evidence. We can't simply point to someone and say, ``He is guilty of a crime. He is a terrorist,'' without some evidence to that fact. That is our tradition. Mr. Chairman, that is what this amendment calls for.

I urge the adoption of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, Mr. Chairman, even the Nazis who came ashore on Long Island that the gentleman referred to before were tried in the military tribunal. They weren't simply thrown in jail and held forever. They were tried in a military tribunal, condemned, and then sentenced to death.

All this amendment says is we should do the same thing, that people who are in the custody and the jurisdiction of the United States already have constitutional rights. We are not giving them constitutional rights. The Supreme Court already said they have them. We are saying they should get a military tribunal or a civilian trial, whichever is chosen. This amendment doesn't deal with that. And they should be condemned or not.

One more thing. The gentleman keeps saying that these people were enemies of the United States captured on the foreign battlefield. Some were and some were not.

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Mr. NADLER. Does the gentleman not know what has been testified to repeatedly, that it will be a lot cheaper for the taxpayers' money to hold them in the United States than in Guantanamo?

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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in strong support of this amendment to prevent bulk collection of data at the Department of Justice.

Last month, this House spoke loud and clear that we oppose the National Security Agency's bulk collection of telephone metadata. Today, the Senate joined us in that judgment, and, together, we have reaffirmed our commitment to the Fourth Amendment and to protecting Americans from unconstitutional government surveillance.

We learned earlier this year that long before the NSA program ban, the Drug Enforcement Administration engaged in its own bulk collection program that provided a model for the NSA to use nearly a decade later. This program included logs of virtually all telephone calls from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries, ostensibly linked to drug trafficking, all without a court order and without authorization from Congress.

Mr. Chairman, enough is enough. Although the DOJ has since shut down this program, there is nothing preventing the Department from renewing it in secret without authorization, as it did before. This amendment would ensure that it remains dormant and that Americans' privacy remains secure.

I thank Mr. Polis and the other cosponsors of the amendment, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for accepting this amendment. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

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