Trump team pursues rethinking of policy

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is embracing the idea of Guantanamo Bay as a jail for terror suspects, a repudiation of the Obama administration’s longtime push to prosecute captured militants in the U.S. court system.

A draft order spelling out a tougher line in the fight against terror dramatically rethinks how the U.S. should detain, monitor and prosecute terrorist suspects. It would reverse Obama’s efforts to close the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and reopen the idea of establishing CIA detention facilities outside the United States.

In its support of Guantanamo the document is likely to renew a debate, which the Obama administration considered closed, about whether military tribunals offshore or civilian trials in American courts offer a fairer and more efficient path to justice.

“To take a step backward would be both practically misguided and morally indefensible,” said Eric Freedman, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University and a legal consultant for Guantanamo detainees.

“The United States, for better or worse, sets an example for governments and social movements alike throughout the world, and it’s already the case that the groups opposed to American values have made extraordinarily effective use of Guantanamo and its betrayal of American values,” Freedman said.

Though the draft order, which the White House said was not official, takes a more expansive view of national security power, it also in some instances relies on legal authorities that remained in place during the Obama administration but went unused.

“The authorities are still there, and there’s no legal reason why it wouldn’t be available to a President Trump,” said Stephen Vladeck, a national security law professor at the University of Texas at Austin.