Public Strongly Opposes Gitmo Closing and Prisoner Transfer to U.S.

By CQ-Roll Call Staff | June 3, 2009 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Guantánamo detainee walks inside an open-air yard at the detention facility. (Getty)

Americans oppose the closing of the Guantánamo Bay prison by 65 percent to 32 percent with 3 percent undecided, according to a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted May 29-31. President Obama had ordered the detention camp closed shortly after taking office in January.

By an even bigger margin, 74 percent to 23 percent with 2 percent undecided, the public opposes moving any of the detainees into prisons in their states, something Obama also said he intended to do. On both issues, Obama ran into a buzzsaw on Capitol Hill in May when the Senate voted to strip funding to close Guantánmo and for transferring any prisoners to the U.S.

Forty percent said they believed the use of Guantánamo to house terrorist suspects had strengthened U.S. national security, 37 percent said it had no effect and 18 percent said it had weakened U.S. security.

Gallup noted that polling "by other firms has found greater support for closing Guantánamo, using different question wordings. Most of these differ from the Gallup question in that they associate the policy with President Obama and do not mention what would be done with the terror suspects who are currently housed at Guantánamo."

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