Press Releases
Senator Roberts Delivers Floor Speech On President’s Failure to Determine Alternative GITMO Location in U.S.
Feb 23 2016
WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today delivered a floor speech on President Obama’s failure to identify a suitable location to carry out his plans to illegally relocate terrorists held at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay to the U.S. mainland.
Video of Senator Roberts’ remarks on the Senate floor can be downloaded here, or watched here.
Earlier today, Senator Roberts released this statement and this video on social media in response to the plan.
The following are the Senator’s remarks as prepared for delivery.
Mr. President, I rise today to speak about President Obama’s plan to move Guantanamo Bay terrorists to the United States. However, it is not much of a plan. It is more of a failed attempt to fulfill a campaign promise and what he believes will secure his legacy.
Fortunately for us – those who believe moving dangerous enemy combatants within our communities is a dangerous, irresponsible, and illogical idea – the president’s plan contains nothing substantive.
In fact, it fails to recommend an alternative location to the current facility at all.
I call that a win.
The plan does not provide any intelligence to substantiate the president’s claims nor does it even provide a chart or graph to support the mathematics on the alleged cost savings.
And there is no estimate regarding the cost to local and state governments to support such a move.
Indeed, the nine page report is short in every regard.
The White House received the Department of Defense’s results of their site surveys and other data regarding potential closing last month. And this (hold up the report), is all we have in return?
I know the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, my good friend and colleague, Senator McCain is not going to be pleased with the lack of substance, data, or articulation of a real plan.
The same goes for Senate Burr, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, in regards to the Administration’s lack of intelligence on moving detainees to the United States.
The lack of a plan and the inability of this Administration to provide a site alternative indicate that none of the sites visited by DoD’s survey team met the demands necessary to hold detainees and more important, keep our communities safe. The fact that no site was named, no substance on those visits provided, tells me that there is no alternative to match what we are now doing safely and securely at GITMO. Period.
This so-called plan, as outlined by the president in his speech today from the White House, skims over four steps to closing Guantanamo Bay.
First, it articulates the Administration’s plan to continue moving detainees designated for transfer by the president's national security team to foreign countries.
In some instances this may have successful with regard to individuals being rehabilitated. But, a third of the time, detainees transferred to third party host counties have returned to the battlefield. And these are just the ones we know about.
This is called recidivism and the rates are too high for this process to be called “secure and responsible” as the Administration has labeled it.
Second, the Administration plans to continue its review of the threat posed by those detainees who are not currently eligible for transfer through the Periodic Review Board.
This is to provide a new review on the current population of detainees who have been deemed too dangerous for transfer. Deemed too dangerous for transfer and yet, this president wants to give them a second shot at getting out.
This makes no sense.
Terrorists are not criminals. As much as this president would like you to believe, terrorists are not equal to the inmates we have across America’s prison system. They are fixated on the destruction of America and they have no regard for life, not that of their own and especially not for the lives of innocent civilians.
The report hones in on having a detainee population anywhere from 30 to 60. There seems to be an assumption on the part of the president – that the review board will determine half of those deemed too dangerous for transfer or release – are suddenly safe for transfer or release.
Does the president believe this is possible or does this assumption simply serve his own means to create cost savings for his plan that can never be realized?
The plan also fails to account for the fact that our nation is still mired in the war on terrorism. We are still fighting in the Middle East and worldwide, including the United States of America, to ensure terrorism does not prevail.
What about individuals we detain from this day forward? What about those individuals with critical information related to the next terrorist threat? How can we operate without a facility like Guantanamo Bay to hold terrorists we take off the battlefield?
Third, the plan attempts to identify individualized dispositions, one-by-one, for those who remain designated for continued law of war detention, to include Article III, military commission, or foreign prosecutions. -- What a muddle.
In his remarks today, President Obama advocated for trying terrorist suspects in Article III courts. The president named two American citizens, Faisal Shahzad and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to articulate his point. Both of these individuals, however, were apprehended in the United States, not on the battle field. The intent of Guantanamo detention facility is to protect the American people by removing terrorists from the battlefield. As the United States faces a growing terrorist threat from organizations like ISIS, which have tens of thousands of members, bringing those terrorists to the United States to stand trial simply cannot be the answer.
It is not safe for the American people and irresponsible to our national security.
Fourth, the plan states the Administration’s desire to “work with Congress to lift unnecessary prohibitions in current law.” But it does not, anywhere in its nine pages, endorse a specific facility to house Guantanamo detainees. Rather, the plan describes a prototype for a detention facility in the United States.
Not Kansas, not Colorado, not South Carolina… not anywhere in the United States.
The president’s long awaited plan is to work with Congress to identify the most appropriate location as soon as possible, according to the summary provided by Department of Defense to my office.
Question: How could it take seven years to arrive at the idea to work with Congress?
If the president had a suitable alternative he would have provided it in this plan.
Further, the plan fails to substantiate President Obama’s repeated claims that Guantanamo Bay serves as a recruiting tool for jihadists, a rallying point for terrorist attacks, hindering relations with allies, and draining Department of Defense resources.
I wrote Defense Secretary Ash Carter in November to ask for intelligence reports or data to support many of these assertions. I asked Secretary Carter if an intelligence assessment has been done in conjunction with the site surveys recently conducted by DoD from the safety of our community’s stand point.
I asked for the Department’s rational for evaluating Fort Leavenworth, when three previous evaluations had made it abundantly clear it is – and continues to be – an unacceptable alternative. I asked if there were intelligence products regarding previous site evaluations at Fort Leavenworth.
The Administration has argued that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for terrorists, so I logically asked for an intelligence assessment to support that argument.
As a follow on, I asked what assessment had been done to reflect that Guantanamo has increased terrorism recruitment.
Finally, was there any empirical data to support the Administration’s argument that national security threats will decrease if enemy combatants are held in the United States?
Common sense will tell you it would increase.
Two months later, the response confirmed my assumptions. The Department of Defense has no intelligence products – no data to provide – to support the president’s argument that GITMO serves as a recruiting tool and that moving detainees to the mainland would increase security and decrease the terrorist threat to the United States.
My colleagues, this plan confirms what many of us already know, there is no safe alternative to GITMO.
Not in Kansas, not in Colorado, not in South Carolina… nowhere on the mainland is there a secure and responsible alternative.
If there were, this president would not have failed to articulate it in his plan.
Mr. President, a plan that is a legacy speech does not safeguard the lives of the American people.
The report is here.
Sites in South Carolina, Kansas, and Colorado have been surveyed as potential replacements for Guantanamo. Senators Roberts, Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Cory Gardner (R-Co.) have been outspoken opponents of President Obama’s intentions to close Guantanamo Bay.
Last night, the Senators issued this joint statement.
They have stated concerns with the 30 percent recidivism rate among released detainees, the hundreds of millions of dollars it will cost to construct a new facility, and the fact that opening domestic facility would place a bright red bullseye for acts of terror on an American community. Sites in South Carolina, Kansas, and Colorado have been surveyed as potential replacements for Guantanamo.
-30-
