Date: 2009-06-11
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

"fornia. I thank my ranking member. Madam Speaker. I rise in support of this motion to instruct for the reasons articulated by the gentleman from. California. But let me talk about another subject that is covered in this bill and one that is of extreme importance. It goes to the question of how we handle those who are at Guantanamo at the present time. This issue has erupted arouhd this country because people are beginning to understand the ramifications of closing Guantanamo and bringing people here to the United States whose only connection to the United States is that they were caught on the battlefield. with the intention of killing Americans. Now. why is it important whether or not we keep Guantanamo open or whether we bring these people -to the United States? We got a little bit of an insight into why its important by the report by a colleague of ours. Mr. ROGERS from Michigan. who. when he was in Afghanistan recently and visited our base there. went to the prison there where we are holding people who we actually captured on the battlefield. He observed the fact that now we have FBI agents Mirandizing. that is. giving Miranda rights statements to those we have found on the battlefield. In other words. Madam Speaker. what we have done is we have transposed the universe in which these people are being detained from one of a combat atmosphere to one of a criminal proceeding in the United States. Now. why is that important? Its important because this is happening for the first time in the history of the United States. We did not do this. obviously. during the Revolutionary War. We did not do it during any war we fought. not the Civil War. not World War I. not World War II. If we had followed this same thinking in World War II. our courts would have been overwhelmed. People forget we have had 2 million POWs that we held during World War II. over 400.000 of them in the United States. Never was it thought that they had all of the rights under the Constitution. But this question has basically been treated- by Federal courts in the past with this perspective: the connectionyou have to the United States is what determines your coverage under the Constitution. Thats why someone coming over the border illegally doesnt have the right to all of the constitutional protections because the only connection to the United States is trying to get in illegally. Here we have people sitting at Guantanamo whose only connection to the United States is that we have reason to believe that they wanted to kill Americans anywhere in the world. So now what were saying is if we take them from Guantanamo and put them in the United States. they have a connection to the United States. They were brought here involuntarily. And the legal arguments that for years have presented a barrier from their obtaining all constitutional rights. that barrier is pulled down. So while this bill has language in it. this conference report. as its being worked on. has language in it with respect to Guantanamo. I dont think we have focused in on what this means. Yes. theres a concern about the threat they may pose to Americans. and that arises out of the fact that some say. well. they could escape from the prisons and then were told. oh. weve got these prisons they cant escape from. But it is more than that. It is that they may be released at the direction of Federal judges. and the only reason they would be released is that they somehow now have access to all of our constitutional rights. So the American people need to understand that we may have a President who says. no. we dont want to release them. We have an Attorney General who testified. no. were going to make sure theyre not released based on everything we do.