Report: Obama Won't Use an Executive Order To Shut Down Gitmo

Alissa Lopez | June 13, 2016
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The Obama administration is reportedly not pursuing the use of an executive order to shut down Guantanamo Bay. 

President Obama has repeatedly expressed his desire to work with Congress to move the prisoners from Guantanamo to prisons in the United States. But thankfully, his endeavor has been far from successful. 

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Current law bars the military from using federal funds to move prisoners at Guantanamo to the United States, and Republican lawmakers have vehemently opposed Obama’s plan to shutter the facility given current terrorism concerns. Annual defense legislation–which Obama has threatened to veto–has also extended prohibitions on moving Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. in fiscal year 2017.

But according to a report released on Monday, administration officials reached an agreement that an executive order would not be the most productive route to take. 

Reuters reported a source familiar with the Guantanamo Bay discussions said White House lawyers and other officials discussed the option of overriding the federal funds ban via an executive order, but failed to come up with a strategy for how to do it. 

"It was just deemed too difficult to get through all of the hurdles that they would need to get through, and the level of support they were likely to receive on it was thought to be too low to generate such controversy, particularly at a sensitive (time) in an election cycle," the source said.

Thankfully, this decision will narrow down even more Obama's ability to shut down the Cuba-based detention camp.

The number of detainees at the detention camp has recently fallen to 80, the lowest it's been since it first opened in 2001. 

Reuters reported: 

Thirty of the remaining detainees at Guantanamo have been approved for transfer to foreign countries and the State Department says it will move all of them out this summer. Those who would be left include 10 being prosecuted in military commissions, and other detainees deemed too dangerous to release or transfer.

This decision not to close Gitmo via an executive order comes one day after an ISIS-affiliated gunman opened fire at a nightclub in Orlando, resulting in at least 50 deaths and 53 injuries. 

It reportedly costs more than $5.5 million a year for each of the remaining 80 prisoners.

President Obama has already done an immense amount of damage by releasing some Gitmo prisoners. In March, The Washington Times reported that at least 12 former Gitmo detainees that have reportedly reengaged in terrorism.

It has been reported that some of the released prisoners are now ISIS fighters, while some are believed to have been responsible for an attack against U.S. or allied forces in Afghanistan that resulted in the death of about a half-dozen Americans in early June. 

Is Obama going to give up on his endeavor? Or will more innocent people have to die at the hands of former Gitmo detainees-turned-current terrorists for him to understand the necessity for the prison?

Then again, when this man has his mind set on something, he doesn't give up -- regardless of the facts.

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