Obama Administration to Create a Courtoom-Within-a-Prison Complex

After proposing a "Minority Report-Type" prison, the Obama administration has considered another option. Opening a courtoom-within-a-prison complex.

According to several senior officials within the Obama administration, the President is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex within the United States, which would hold suspected terrorists at a maximum-security prison. The senior officials state that Pres. Obama is planning on opening the maximum-security prison in Michigan and at the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. These locations would combine military and civilian detention facilities. Also, either of the two prisons would hold the 230 suspected Al-Qaeda, Taliban and other foreign insurgents that are imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. Obama’s administration has outlined the goals of this new type of imprisonment: •Moving all the Guantanamo detainees to a single U.S. prison. The Justice Department has identified between 60 and 80 who could be prosecuted, either in military or federal criminal courts. The Pentagon would oversee the detainees who would face trial in military tribunals. The Bureau of Prisons, an arm of the Justice Department, would manage defendants in federal courts •Building a court facility within the prison site where military or criminal defendants would be tried. Doing so would create a single venue for almost all the criminal defendants, ending the need to transport them elsewhere in the U.S. for trial •Providing long-term holding cells for a small but still undetermined number of detainees who will not face trial because intelligence and counter terror officials conclude they are too dangerous to risk being freed •Building immigration detention cells for detainees ordered released by courts but still behind bars because countries are unwilling to take them. Experts in Constitutional law expect that this new prison will receive much legal and logistics strife. This new complex preparation comes after the Obama administration proposed a camp that would house suspected terrorists from committing future crimes. Many House Republicans are against this new measure and call it an “ill-conceived plan” that would bring terrorists on U.S. soil. Spokesperson for House Minority Whip Leader Republican Congressman John Boehner said, “The administration is going to face a severe public backlash unless it shelves this plan and goes back to the drawing board.” Congress has recently blocked $80 million that would bring Guantanamo detainees to the United States. Since the inauguration of Pres. Obama, justice department officials have been trying to create a plan that would end Guantanamo Bay. However, in May the President said that he would "reform and restart military tribunals," which would contradict his campaign promise of ending Guantanamo Bay and cease his executive order.