WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided not to seek legislation to establish a system of preventive detention to hold terrorism suspects and will instead rely on a 2001 congressional resolution authorizing military force against al-Qaeda and the Taliban to continue to detain people indefinitely and without charge, according to administration officials.
Leading congressional Democrats and members of the civil rights community had signaled opposition to any new indefinite-detention regime, fearing that it would expand government powers and undermine the rule of law and U.S. legal traditions.
The administration’s decision avoids a potentially rancorous debate that could alienate key allies at a time when President Barack Obama needs congressional and public support to transfer detainees held at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the United States for trial or continued incarceration.
The administration has concluded that its detention powers, as currently accepted by the federal courts, are adequate to the task of holding some Guantanamo Bay detainees indefinitely.
And although legal advocacy groups, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, are unhappy with the existing system, they acknowledge that it has enabled some detainees to win their release and also has limited government power in ways that any new law might not.
“This is very welcome news and very big news,” said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU.
“Going to Congress with new detention authority legislation would only have made a bad situation worse,” Anders said. “It likely would have triggered a chaotic debate that would have been beyond the ability of the White House to control and would have put U.S. detention policy even further outside the rule of law.”
About 200 detainees have filed suit under habeas corpus, a centuries-old legal doctrine that allows prisoners to challenge the basis for their confinements through the courts.
The government has lost 30 of 38 habeas cases in U.S. District Court, with the judges often citing a lack of evidence to justify continued incarceration.
However, 20 of those detainees continue to be held at Guantanamo Bay because the government has not found countries willing to take them, according to statistics compiled by David Remes, a habeas lawyer.
