Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was crowned Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick on Tuesday, pushed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and move its terrorist captives into holding facilities in America. Gitmo, Walz said, is a "serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East."
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Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was named Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick on Tuesday, pushed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and move its terrorist captives into holding facilities in the United States. His position put him to the left of other prominent Minnesota Democrats like Amy Klobuchar, but Gitmo, Walz said, is a "serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East."
As a House member representing Minnesota's First Congressional District, Walz voted against a 2009 measure that would have barred the federal government from shutting down Gitmo and relocating terrorists housed there to American cities. Walz railed against the U.S. detention camp as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. He also argued that Minnesota's criminal justice facilities could "handle" housing Gitmo terrorists.
"Walz said he thinks the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay is a serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East," MPR News reported in June 2009, shortly after Walz returned from a "fact-finding trip to the Middle East."
"Walz said Guantanamo should be closed, and the detainees there should be dealt with appropriately. He said that could include care at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester," a federal prison in Minnesota for inmates who require long-term medical care.
Walz's crusade to close Gitmo puts him in close company with some of Harris's top campaign advisers.
Former attorney general Eric Holder, who led the vetting process for Harris's VP search, attempted to move the trial of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh-Mohammed from Gitmo to a Manhattan courtroom, an effort that blew up in 2011 after Congress passed a bipartisan bill blocking the move. Harris's "key campaign adviser" and brother-in-law Tony West, meanwhile, served as defense counsel for "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh and later pushed policies while working under Holder that enabled detained terrorists to more easily challenge the government’s case against them.
The Biden-Harris administration sparked a furious backlash last week when it inked a plea deal with Sheikh-Mohammed and two 9/11 co-conspirators. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin subsequently pulled the deal. Harris has not weighed in on the controversy.
Walz's 2009 vote against blocking the transfer of Gitmo terrorists to the United States left him at odds with some Democrats. Sen. Klobuchar, for example, said in 2009 that "there is no place in Minnesota for prisoners from Guantanamo."
Walz was joined in his opposition to the measure by former Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison, a far-left Democrat and close Walz ally known for his work with prominent anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam. Progressive Democrats pushed for Harris to choose Walz over Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a pro-Israel Jew.
Walz’s push to shutdown Gitmo emerged as a flashpoint during his 2014 House race against Republican Jim Hagedorn.
"It's bad enough that Tim Walz supports Barack Obama's open borders policy, which has made our nation vulnerable to ISIS terrorists and the Ebola disease," Hagedorn said during a press conference in Oct. 2014. "But adding insult to injury, Congressman Walz wants to give Islamic terrorists a first class plane ride to America and place them in our backyard."
"I'm not sure if Tim Walz understands who will be heading to Rochester to visit the Guantanamo Bay al-Qaeda terrorists, but it won't be Billy Graham and the Pope," Hagedorn said. "Rochester does not need the publicity, potential chaos, and negative baggage that will accompany the world's most notorious terrorists."
Two years later, in 2016, Walz again rejected a House bill that would have barred the federal government from bringing Gitmo terrorists into the United States.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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