Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School, spoke with Georgia Public Broadcasting about why former President Joe Biden’s Guantánamo Bay legacy, and the story of Guantánamo itself, has “always been one step forward, several steps backwards.”
When Biden first came into office, “there was a sense of aggressive movement” on working to shutter the prison and resolve its remaining legal cases, “and then it just sort of dissipated,” said Karen Greenberg, director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law School and author of the book The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo’s First 100 Days.
“It’s always been one step forward, several steps backwards — that’s been the story of Guantánamo,” Greenberg added, “and I don’t think the Biden administration has changed that at all…It’s a tremendous failure of leadership, and has been over and over and over again.”
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How Guantánamo decisions will play out during Trump’s second term is an open question. During his first term, Trump promised to keep Guantánamo open and “load it up with some bad dudes,” although ultimately he did not send any new prisoners there and ended up releasing one.
Still, Biden’s failure to close Guantánamo — paired with the likelihood that the Trump administration will fight any efforts to shut it down — leaves Greenberg, of Fordham Law, wondering if the military prison may stay open until its remaining prisoners die of illness or old age.
“I now cannot see a path forward for closure,” she said, “and this is the first time I’ve really felt it’s not going to happen, ever.”