Kansas’ senators and the 3rd District congressman are opposing a plan by President Obama to close down the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center and transfer inmates to prisons in the United States.
They said they are especially against detainees being transferred to Fort Leavenworth, Kan., or the Leavenworth area detention facilities.
U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., 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.
“There is no safe alternative to GITMO,” Sen. Roberts said. “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.”
In a news release, Sen. Roberts said the President’s plan is “short on details and serves little purpose but to varnish the President’s failed national security legacy.”
Sen. Roberts also released a video of what he thinks of the President’s plan to transfer Guantanamo Bay inmates – with a picture of Roberts throwing a piece of paper (representing the transfer plan) in a trash can. https://twitter.com/SenPatRoberts/status/702168800553205760
To read Sen. Roberts’ news release, visit http://www.roberts.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=EDC77676-E1F4-4FCB-B2DB-896C2379580E.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., also issued a statement opposing transfers from Guantanamo Bay to the mainland.
“The president’s move down the unlawful path to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is reckless – especially after numerous Department of Defense officials and his own Attorney General confirmed it is against the law,” Sen. Moran said, in a statement. “Over the last seven years, this administration has been incapable of presenting a comprehensive, legally justifiable closure and relocation strategy that maintains the safety and security of Americans, and I don’t anticipate the plan presented to Congress today will provide any substantive planning or legal justification.
“I remain committed to blocking the transfer of Guantanamo detainees anywhere in the United States, especially Fort Leavenworth. The critical mission of the Command and General Staff College in educating military members from ally nations across the world would be compromised. We must safeguard the missions on Fort Leavenworth, the nearly 14,000 military and civilian personnel and their family members, and the thousands of Kansans who live in the Leavenworth community.”
U.S. Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-3rd Dist., released these remarks prepared for delivery:
“Let me be clear: bringing the world’s most dangerous terrorists to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, or anywhere else in the United States is a request that Congress cannot and shall not honor,” Rep. Yoder said.
“The President, however, continues to try to move forward on this in spite of vocal American opposition and bipartisan legislation that this Congress has passed — legislation signed into law by this President that prohibits bringing these known terrorists on to American soil and closing the facility at Guantanamo. …
“We will not put our national security at risk. We will not unilaterally disarm ourselves in the War on Terror, voluntarily give up intelligence-gathering capabilities, and put our communities in the cross-hairs of terrorists.
“What we demand is the President enforce the laws on the books and follow the Constitution. That’s why I will continue to do everything in my power to stop the Administration’s transfer of terrorists to American soil in clear violation of federal law.”