In 2009, Obama announced a strategy of preventive "prolonged detention" without trial for Guantanamo Bay prisoners:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/us/politics/23detain.html
“In our constitutional system,” Mr. Obama said, “prolonged detention should not be the decision of any one man.”
But Mr. Obama’s critics say his proposal is Bush redux. Closing the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and holding detainees domestically under a new system of preventive detention would simply “move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested this month that as many as 100 detainees might be held in the United States under such a system.
Mr. Obama chose to call his proposal “prolonged detention,” which made it sound more reassuring than some of its more familiar names. In some countries, it is called “administrative detention,” a designation with a slightly totalitarian ring. Some of its proponents call it “indefinite detention,” which evokes the Bush administration’s position that Guantánamo detainees could be held until the end of the war on terror — perhaps for the rest of their lives — even if acquitted in war crimes trials.
Mr. Obama’s proposal was a sign of the sobering difficulties posed by the president’s plan to close the Guantánamo prison by January. The prolonged detention option is necessary, he said, because there may be some detainees who cannot be tried but who pose a security threat.
In 2010 Obama doubled-down on this strategy, completely independently of Congress:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/us/22gitmo.html?hpw
The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday.
Obama's plan to "close Gitmo" involved transferring the remaining prisoners to a facility in Illinois:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8413230.stm
US President Barack Obama has ordered the federal government to buy a prison in Illinois to take a number of inmates from Guantanamo Bay.
The move is a key part of Mr Obama's plan to close the Cuba-based jail.
The number of inmates for transfer to the Thomson Correctional Center has not been given officially, but US media report it could be between 35 and 90.
The ACLU quickly found fault with this plan:
https://www.aclu.org/news/creating-gitmo-north-alarming-step-says-aclu?redirect=national-security/creating-gitmo-north-alarming-step-says-aclu
The creation of a 'Gitmo North' in Illinois is hardly a meaningful step forward. Shutting down Guantánamo will be nothing more than a symbolic gesture if we continue its lawless policies onshore.
"Alarmingly, all indications are that the administration plans to continue its predecessor's policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial for some detainees, with only a change of location. Such a policy is completely at odds with our democratic commitment to due process and human rights whether it's occurring in Cuba or in Illinois. In fact, while the Obama administration inherited the Guantánamo debacle, this current move is its own affirmative adoption of those policies. It is unimaginable that the Obama administration is using the same justification as the Bush administration used to undercut centuries of legal jurisprudence and the principle of innocent until proven guilty and the right to confront one's accusers.
None of this suggests that Obama wished to end the policy of
indefinite detention without due process, which is the key issue - not the physical location of the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Here's Russ Feingold's explanation for why he voted against the plan to move Gitmo to Illinois:
http://www.progressive.org/fein052309.html
My primary concern, however, relates to your reference to the possibility of indefinite detention without trial for certain detainees. While I appreciate your good faith desire to at least enact a statutory basis for such a regime, any system that permits the government to indefinitely detain individuals without charge or without a meaningful opportunity to have accusations against them adjudicated by an impartial arbiter violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional.
While I recognize that your administration inherited detainees who, because of torture, other forms of coercive interrogations, or other problems related to their detention or the evidence against them, pose considerable challenges to prosecution, holding them indefinitely without trial is inconsistent with the respect for the rule of law that the rest of your speech so eloquently invoked. Indeed, such detention is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world. It is hard to imagine that our country would regard as acceptable a system in another country where an individual other than a prisoner of war is held indefinitely without charge or trial.
Once a system of indefinite detention without trial is established, the temptation to use it in the future would be powerful. And, while your administration may resist such a temptation, future administrations may not. There is a real risk, then, of establishing policies and legal precedents that rather than ridding our country of the burden of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, merely set the stage for future Guantanamos, whether on our shores or elsewhere, with disastrous consequences for our national security.
Worse, those policies and legal precedents would be effectively enshrined as acceptable in our system of justice, having been established not by one, largely discredited administration, but by successive administrations of both parties with greatly contrasting positions on legal and constitutional issues.
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