Time has arrived to close Guantanamo Bay.

From almost every practical perspective, it makes sense for the United States to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Center.

President Obama on Tuesday sent Congress a plan to shut down the facility, which President George W. Bush established on shrimpthe southeast shore of Cuba after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Reaction from Republicans — especially those running for president — was predictably hysterical, but a sober review argues for Congress to pass a closure plan.

Only 91 prisoners remain at Gitmo. The high was nearly 800. The government transferred most of those detainees to foreign countries. As Obama noted Tuesday, Bush approved about 500 transfers. The detainee count was 241 when Obama took office, pledging to close the center.

No transfer occurs unless the Guantánamo Review Task Force approves it. The task force includes representatives of the departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Of those 91 remaining detainees, 35 are eligible for transfer. Ten are in the military tribunal process that the Bush administration set up to prosecute Gitmo detainees. Forty-six cannot be transferred and would have to come to the United States. The Obama administration has identified high-security federal facilities in Colorado, Kansas and South Carolina that might house them.

Critics have raised alarms about bringing the detainees here, as if there were no precedent for securely holding accused or convicted terrorists in U.S. facilities. But most of those who carried out the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center are at that Colorado facility. So is Zaccarias Moussaoui, whom the government suspects was the 20th hijacker on 9-11. So is Richard Reid, who tried to bring down a jetliner with a shoe bomb.

Actually, punishment for the worst of the Gitmo detainees probably would have been swifter if the Bush administration had never sent them to Cuba. Why? Blame the dysfunctional military tribunal system there. It was supposed to make prosecution of terrorism suspects more efficient — and certainly more secret. Instead, the tribunals have been a legal debacle.

As of last summer, the tribunals had delivered just eight convictions. And in June 2015, a federal appeals court struck down a terrorism conspiracy conviction with a ruling that legal analysts believe could jeopardize seven similar convictions. Meanwhile, U.S. civilian courts have produced about 500 terrorism-related convictions since 9-11. Of those defendants, 67 were brought from abroad.

Now, let’s talk money. The detention center, which has about 2,000 employees, cost $450 million to operate last year. That’s $5 million-plus per detainee — about 100 times what it costs to house an inmate in the federal prison system. Keeping it open indefinitely could require $200 million worth of improvements. The Obama administration estimates the savings from closing Gitmo would be $1.7 billion over 20 years.

Obama’s weakest argument is that terrorist groups use Gitmo to recruit followers. Multiple news reports have shown the Islamic State and others may include the center in their propaganda but don’t highlight it. Shutting it down tomorrow wouldn’t stop terrorists from plotting to kill Americans.

Even so, from legal, security and fiscal perspectives, the United States would be better off closing Gitmo. The only perspective that matters for some, however, is politics. And that shouldn’t matter at all.