LEGISLATION WOULD KEEP SUSPECTED TERRORISTS OFF AMERICAN STREETS

South Carolina’s Senior U.S. Senator has teamed up with a Connecticut colleague to create legislation that would prohibit President Obama from bringing suspected terrorists into America.

Lindsey Graham announced Tuesday that he and Joe Lieberman filed a bill to force the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of enemy combatants ordered to be released from the military prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“The legislation is clear — former enemy combatants should not be released into the general population of the United States,” said Graham. “Any decision to do this will put Americans at unnecessary risk.”

Under the legislation, detainees will be transferred to DHS while waiting to be returned to their home country or, if they unable to return there, another nation.

Added Lieberman, “That is a common-sense solution that protects our security and keeps potential terrorists off American streets.”

The Obama Administration, however, said they are having a difficult time returning the suspected terrorists to their home countries.

Obama has ordered the Guantanamo facility closed by January 2010, but has failed to specify where the detinees should be sent. Some believe the president is considering housing some at the Naval Brig in Charleston.

And media reports have suggested that there is consideration of the release of Chinese Uighurs — who trained at terrorist camps in Afghanistan and have been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2002 — into the northern Virginia suburbs.

Obama has asked that $80 million of a current bill to fund current U.S. military operations be set aside to transfer detainees to the U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint and other Republicans are working to strip that requested funding from the legislation.

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