In the Shadow of Liberty by Ana Raquel Minian

Author:Ana Raquel Minian [Minian, Ana Raquel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2024-04-16T00:00:00+00:00

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Judge Johnson’s order could have changed the course of Guantánamo’s history. In his final ruling, the judge wrote: “The U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction and control of the United States where the criminal and civil laws of the United States apply.” According to this ruling, Guantánamo was juridically equivalent to the continental United States, which meant that the rights provided by the US Constitution had to be respected there.

This part of the ruling especially bothered Clinton’s cabinet members. In August 1993, the Department of Justice appealed Judge Johnson’s decision. By then all the Haitian refugees who had been held captive at Guantánamo were in the United States, but the Clinton administration did not want to have a legal precedent establishing that the Constitution’s due-process clause applied on the naval base. One government official maintained that Clinton’s aides were “confident that they would do the right thing” but did not want “to be forced by the law to have to do so.”

The administration’s appeal was a big blow to the lawyers who had fought for the refugees. They were convinced that if the case reached the Supreme Court, which had been unsympathetic to the refugees’ cause from the start, they would lose. Distressed by the possibility of losing at trial, the lawyers ended up settling with the Department of Justice. As part of the settlement, Judge Johnson vacated his final opinion, which meant that there would be no legal precedent and that Guantánamo could again be used in the future as an extraterritorial site to hold foreigners without rights.

If Clinton administration officials ever intended to “do the right thing” at Guantánamo, they most definitely forgot their lofty goal as soon as they were no longer legally mandated to respect it. In June 1994, Clinton’s White House opened Guantánamo’s detention facilities once again. This time, the government detained twenty thousand Haitian refugees who were escaping violence, as well as thirty thousand Cubans who had fled the island after Castro once more opened the door to emigration. As before, the detention of these refugees seemed interminable. It was not until the end of 1995 that the last Haitians were taken out of Guantánamo—most of them deported back to Haiti. The last set of Cuban balseros (rafters) were allowed to leave in early 1996—most of them for the United States. The Clinton administration then continued to use the naval base to detain refugees when it considered detainment necessary. In 1997 and 1999, the Coast Guard intercepted various groups of Cubans and sent them to Guantánamo.

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