Brandt Goldstein
Appearances
Criminal
A Land Without Law
The government lawyers took the position that the students and co. had no idea what they were talking about.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
This case should be dismissed immediately. The U.S. Constitution does not apply to Guantanamo. No other federal law applies to Guantanamo. We can do whatever we want to these refugees. We can be arbitrary. We can be capricious. We can even be cruel. That's a quote in the court record.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
which is an innocuous-sounding term, and it effectively, it packs a punch because it effectively tears up Judge Johnson's order and says, for now, it doesn't mean anything. You can't go to Guantanamo. You can't interfere with what they're doing.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And that was it. Cohen, the students, and the other human rights workers had no access to Guantanamo.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
They sent back as many people as they possibly could. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It started at 6 a.m.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
Bush decides, you know what, forget bringing any more Haitians to Guantanamo. We have thousands there. It's too many. And he issues what amounts to a direct return order.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And if that was the turning point in the case, the moment that sealed it was the result of a video recording that... the students had gotten their hands on just a few days earlier. And this was a video recording of one of these camp sweeps by the military with the soldiers in riot gear and the M16 weapons and the guard dogs and the bulldozers knocking down gates and barracks.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
And this is when the judge finally saw exactly how bad things had been. And by the time they turned off the videotape, the case was effectively over.
Criminal
A Land Without Law
They ruled that the word return didn't mean return because the refugees were not being returned from anywhere if they were intercepted on the high seas. It's a pretty unpersuasive reading of the law, but the justices were evidently worried about tying the president's hands beyond U.S. borders. So the refugees that were held on Guantanamo, the last few hundred, are allowed into the country.