National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Chair, I rise in support of this amendment.

I have already expressed my deep concern for the rushed, almost frenzied manner in which the administration is emptying the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

We saw the dangerous Taliban Five transfer.

Just this past December, the administration released six Guantanamo Bay detainees to the small South American country of Uruguay. These six detainees had been trained in munitions and document forgery. In quiet negotiations with Uruguay to take the six, the Obama administration offered the President of Uruguay written assurances that none of them had ever been involved in conducting or facilitating terrorist activities, throwing out with a stroke of a pen the intelligence and analysis that had led to their detention.

These six former terrorists and Guantanamo Bay detainees live only six blocks away from the U.S. Embassy, which has forced the Embassy to heighten its security posture. The Obama administration has effectively prioritized its political goal of closing Guantanamo over our national security interests. The administration's desperation to empty Guantanamo has caused six hardened terrorists to land dangerously close to an embassy in our hemisphere.

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