You Don't Have to Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here

Today the Supreme Court set the stage for the next legal showdown in the Guantanamo detainee saga. The Court granted cert in the case Kiyemba v. Obama. The detainees involved in the case are Muslim men from the Uighur region of China. The Bush administration determined that the men posed no terrorist threat and the Justice Department has stated that the men are free to leave Guantanamo for any country that will accept them. The case is complicated by the fact that the men fear being tortured if they are returned to their native China, where they are viewed as terrorists. Despite capturing them and hauling them off to an island prison, the United States has refused to accept the men. The issue in Kiyemba focuses on the power of the courts to make immigration decisions, an area previously reserved for the legislature and executive. The Obama administration is arguing that the courts do not possess the power to order that the men be accepted into the United States. The Kiyemba team is arguing that without the power to order that the men be accepted, the ruling in the Boumediene case, which authorized federal courts to hear habeas petitions from Guantanamo prisoners, would be hollow. The New York Times and the Washington Post both have articles on the issue.