Donald Trump keeps getting into trouble based on things he’s said, and that’s now swung around to the prisoners at Guantanamo. The US Supreme Court has allowed a variety of shenanigans around Gitmo based on the idea that there is some vague sense of due process to deal with the people who are being stashed there.
But a group of the prisoners there are now suing in federal court over their detention, saying that Trump’s repeated statements that as far as he’s concerned, they’re locked in and he’s throwing away the key, regardless of any formal testing and disposition of their individual capture and imprisonment, violates that SCOTUS premise, and the constitutional requirement that all people in the purview of the US government are entitled to due process.
Will this go anywhere? Hard to say. But if it does, it will be part and parcel of Donald Trump’s inability to keep his mouth shut (or his sense that he needs to keep throwing red meat to his nativist base, whatever the cost).
Guantánamo inmates claim Trump’s ‘anti-Muslim bias’ fuels their detention | US news | The Guardian
One little thing: for any of those who were brought to Gitmo before 2009, they have remained there under three Presidents (Bush, Obama, and Trump), not just one. It's hard to claim that their continued incarceration is primarily due to Trump.
+John E. Bredehoft No, but if Trump makes it (verbally) clear that he's not going to even bother with due process (even if that term has been seriously warped by the whole Gitmo saga), then he's taken it to another level. His further clear religious animus also provides leverage if he doesn't continue a process for trial and exoneration / release.