Republicans ready legal fight against Obama’s Gitmo plan

WASHINGTON: Republicans in the House of Representatives are preparing legal action in case President Barack Obama tries to transfer detainees at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay to the United States, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Wednesday.

Ryan told reporters that "we are making legal preparations" in case Obama tries to "break the law" by bringing detainees from the prison in Cuba to the United States, which he said would violate restrictions that Congress had passed.

The leader of the House of Representatives, Speaker Paul Ryan, says Republicans are taking legal steps to stop President Barack Obama from closing the US prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.Ryan told reporters that lawmakers have the votes to block Obama's plan in Congress and enough votes to override any veto. Separately, the Republican said his party is "taking all legal preparations necessary" to ensure the prison remains open and terror suspects aren't moved to the US.

Under Obama's plan, roughly 35 of the 91 current detainees will be transferred to other countries in the coming months, leaving up to 60 detainees who are either facing trial by military commission or have been determined to be too dangerous to release but are not facing charges. Those detainees would be relocated to a US facility.

With Congress showing no willingness to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, President Barack Obama likely has just one option to make good on his election pledge before leaving office — shutting the controversial and costly Cuban facility by executive order.

But while Obama has shown a willingness to wield executive power in the face of congressional inaction on issues such as immigration and background checks on gun sales, most legal experts interviewed said they don't expect him to go to that well again to close Guantanamo.

Michael Greenberger, a former Justice Department attorney now teaching law at the University of Maryland, said such a decision would be the result of political calculation in the midst of a presidential campaign rather than concerns about the constitutionality of such an action.

"The chance of Guantanamo detainees being brought to the U.S. in an environment where you have Republican presidential candidates trying to outdo one another on how many illegal immigrants they're going to deport is very, very small," he said.