The golf courses and beaches of South Carolina are no place for a Guantanamo Bay “terrorists,” Gov. Nikki Haley (R-S.C.) told a congressional committee on Thursday, pleading with them to reject President Obama’s plan to relocate the military prison’s remaining detainee population to stateside facilities.
“Why would anyone want to put terrorists in Charleston?” Haley asked a House Homeland Security subcommittee, referring to Pentagon plans to bring Gitmo prisoners to a military prison near the city.
“Charleston, the city we call the Holy City. The city named the number one vacation spot in the country four years in a row,” she added. “It makes zero sense.” Haley said businesses will be more reluctant to invest and tourists more hesitant to travel to the state if it is “known to house these heinous terrorists.”
The governor’s argument was undermined, however, by lawmakers who noted that her state is already housing one notorious extremist, responsible for killing nine S.C. residents last year.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) asked if South Carolina has already seen its tourist industry harmed since it took custody of Dylann Roof: a white supremacist who attempted to start a race war last summer by murdering nine people at an historically-black church in Charleston.
“Has that posed any kind of security issues to your knowledge to the people of Charleston,” Rep. Thompson asked.
“We wont let it pose any security issues,” the Governor responded. She added that “no one wants him here,” referring to Roof, and said the state is “in the process of going forward with the death penalty.”
“Sometimes we have difficult jobs to do that include dealing with bad people,” Thompson replied.
Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-La.) picked up on the line of questioning later in the hearing.
“It doesn’t matter the nationality of the perpetrator,” he said, drawing a connection between Roof and terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay—most of who have not been charged with any crime.
“Terrorism is terrorism no matter the perpetrator or the victim,” Richmond told Haley. “The fact that you can hold a domestic terrorist means you have the ability to safely house a very dangerous person.”
Haley admitted that her state can handle the task. “I will never question our military and our officers. We are totally capable.” But the governor claimed there was a difference between Roof’s detention and the demands associated with relocating a significant amount of the remaining Gitmo population to South Carolina.
“Dealing with one has shaken the state enough,” she said, “I can’t imagine what we would have to do if we had to deal with 80 of them.”
Although 80 detainees currently remain at the Gitmo military prison in Cuba, roughly half of them have been deemed eligible for release into the custody of foreign governments.
The Obama administration is hoping to convince Congress to lift the ban on bringing the remaining prisoners who are not approved for transfer to the US for further detention. That would allow the Pentagon to formally shut down the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, enabling President Obama to check off a campaign promise that dates back to his first election in 2008.
The Navy Brig in Charleston is just one site scouted by the Defense Department as a suitable replacement for Gitmo. Other facilities in Colorado and Kansas are also being considered.
Testifying on a second panel was Ken Gude, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, who told the committee that many extremists have been imprisoned on domestic soil post-9/11 with no risks to date.
“We have at least 11 states and the District of Columbia that since 9/11 have housed very high ranking, senior and extremely dangerous international terrorists in maximum security prisons,” Gude stated. That includes Charleston, which detained three terror suspects for much of the Bush Administration, including Jose Padilla, who government officials claimed in 2002 tried to build a “dirty bomb.”
American jails are housing more than 440 prisoners convicted of terrorism.
