I continue to believe that operating the facility weakens our national security by wasting resources, damaging our relationships with key allies, and strengthening our enemies. My Administration will interpret these provisions as consistent with existing and future determinations by the agencies of the Executive responsible for detainee transfers. And, in the event that these statutory restrictions operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my Administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict.
On the prohibition of transfer to the U.S. for federal trial:
“My administration will interpret these provisions as consistent with existing and future determinations by the agencies of the executive responsible for detainee transfers,” Obama said. “In the event that these statutory restrictions operate in a manner that violates constitutional separation of powers principles, my administration will implement them in a manner that avoids the constitutional conflict.”
This year's NDAA contained some new restrictions:
The bill extended and strengthened limits on transfers out of Guantánamo to troubled nations like Yemen, the home country of the bulk of the remaining low-level detainees who have been cleared for repatriation. It also, for the first time, limited the Pentagon’s ability to transfer the roughly 50 non-Afghan citizens being held at the Parwan prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan at a time when the future of American detention operations there is murky.
Obama signed the bill into law Wednesday.
The cost of Gitmo is enormous. There are 166 remaining detainees at Gitmo. The Miami Herald reports:
1,700 troops and civilians serve on temporary or contract duties — in a setting where the Pentagon imports everything from food to fuel for electricity to entertainment for both captives and captors.
...The Obama administration has estimated the costs of keeping a captive at Guantánamo as topping $800,000 per prisoner per year. A Government Accountability Office study on the possibility of relocating Guantanamo captives to U.S. soil estimated the cost of one year’s federal confinement in a maximum security lockup at $34,627.55 a year.
DOJ has cleared 55 detainees for release, mostly Yemenis and Syrians, but they can't leave because of the Congress' restrictions.
