Just two days after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the shutdown of Guantanamo. The detention compound at the U.S. naval base on the southern coast of Cuba was built to hold militants captured in the course of the post-9/11 war on terror. But by the time of Obama’s ascent to the White House, Guantanamo had become synonymous with hypocrisy.
America insisted that other nations treat detainees with dignity, and yet secretly tortured and mistreated individuals it had in custody at Guantanamo, relying on the cover of national security to justify its actions. In signing an executive order mandating Gitmo’s shutdown, Obama said the U.S. would continue fighting terrorism “in a manner that is consistent with our values and our ideals.”
Obama was able to shrink the population at Guantanamo from 245 in 2009 to 41 when he left office, but Congress stymied his bid to shut down the compound. When Donald Trump became president in 2016, he not only kept Gitmo open, but pledged to fill its cells with even more detainees. For whatever reason, he never acted on that pledge.
