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Kansas Officials Send Letter To Obama Protesting Possible Guantanamo Transfer

Americasroof, Wikipedia

Dozens of Kansas officials have sent President Barack Obama a letter to protest the possible transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison at Fort Leavenworth.

The letter, sent Monday, is signed by more than 60 elected officials, including Rep. Mike Pompeo, Gov. Sam Brownback, Secretary of State Kris Kobach, and Leavenworth Mayor Lisa Weakley.

The group writes that Obama’s plan to close Guantanamo and possibly move detainees to Leavenworth could “jeopardize our families, schools and downtown businesses, and make Leavenworth a target.” The letter also says Middle Eastern allies could stop sending officers to train at Forth Leavenworth if detainees are transferred there.

Several U.S. sites have been surveyed to house the remaining 112 terrorism suspects currently detained at Guantanamo. Fort Leavenworth has the only maximum security prison within the Department of Defense.

In August, Brownback and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley sent a joint letter to Obama formally denouncing plans to move detainees to their states. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt and other top prosecutors from Colorado and South Carolina have also spoken out against the Obama administration’s plan.

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Nadya Faulx is KMUW's Digital News Editor and Reporter, which means she splits her time between working on-air and working online, managing news on KMUW.org, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. She joined KMUW in 2015 after working for a newspaper in western North Dakota. Before that she was a diversity intern at NPR in Washington, D.C.