The United States Constitution is lauded by many as an amazing document. Some of its best safeguards are the protections afforded individuals by the amendments known as The Bill of Rights subsequently added in 1791.

Some of the rights like freedom of speech, religion and the press, the right to bear arms, and the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury are considered sacred by Americans.

Much of America’s legal system was drawn from English history. At one time England was ruled by the “divine right of kings,” whose power was restricted only by God. The kings had their infamous dungeons where people were imprisoned, and if the king desired the key was tossed away. People were left to rot indefinitely without the levying of charges or the holding of trials.

The monarchy in England was eventually stripped of the power to imprison people without cause, and rights like a speedy public trial by an impartial jury were incorporated into the U.S. Constitution for good reason.

America holds itself out as a beacon of individual freedom and a moral example for the rest of the world to follow. That reputation is suffering ongoing damage due to our maintenance of the symbolic dungeon known as Guantánamo Bay.

As a Senator in 2007, President Barack Obama said, “Our legitimacy is reduced when we have a Guantánamo that is open, when we suspend habeas corpus, those kind of things erode our moral claims that we are acting on behalf of broader universal principles.”

The United Nations in 2014 criticized the U.S. for its “reluctance to work with international authorities on the issue of accountability for human rights violations.” The U.N. observed that this failure “has made it easier for other nations to shirk their responsibilities.”

America has controlled 45 square miles of Cuban land for 115 years under a lease that was imposed upon the country as a condition of obtaining full independence at the end of the Spanish American war. The lease originally granted the territory as a “coaling and naval station” and provided that the U.S. military could use the land “indefinitely.”

The last treaty signed regarding the property was in 1938 and required the U.S. to pay $4,085 a year. The U.S. has continued to send this amount every year for 45 square miles of land, but the Castro government has never cashed a check and wants the land returned to Cuba.

A prison was created at Guantanamo in 2002 by the Bush administration to hold captives taken in response to 9/11. Forty of those captives are still there, and our federal government has become the king who tossed away the key to its dungeon.

History has proven that when the United States comes under attack our federal government is quick to put the U.S. Constitution in the shredder along with the values we claim distinguish us from despotic nations. That happened to Japanese Americans after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and it is ongoing in Cuba. Fear and retribution encourage people to do unjust things.

The “enemy combatants” held there are not U.S. citizens, and our government labeled them combatants in an effort to shirk the Geneva Convention. The Bush administration also opted to take the captives to a location off U.S. soil where it thought it could operate without legal restraints.

America has had a contentious relationship with Cuba since Fidel Castro came to power. The Castro regime is a police state in which human rights violations are well documented. The country was liberated at the point of a gun by Castro’s guerrillas, and its citizens have sadly been held captive ever since by government oppression.

However, it’s hard to advocate for positive change in Cuba when you are maintaining a military compound against a country’s wishes (at a ludicrous rent) that contains a prison that is an abomination when it comes to human rights.

Approximately 780 people have been processed through Guantanamo Bay’s prison since it was opened in 2002. Very few of them were ever actually tried or convicted of anything. Of the 40 detainees being held there, 28 have never had any kind of charges levied against them. Some have been held inside the prison for 16 years

It has been documented that our federal government at its highest levels authorized the torture of inmates at Guantanamo and elsewhere, that suicides and multiple suicide attempts have occurred due to the conditions of imprisonment, and murder accusations were raised in June of 2006 when it was alleged that torture led to the death of three inmates.

Our actions in Cuba are an international disgrace that is doing irreparable damage to our nation’s reputation as a place of freedom and rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Hamden v. Rumsfeld (2006) held that article 3 of the Geneva Convention applied to the inmates in Cuba providing minimum guarantees of fair and humane treatment including trials for all detainees, and the prohibition of torture and indefinite detentions.

Despite this ruling, some of these detentions continue, and the current administration recently argued in federal court that it believes it has the power to hold these people without charging them for 100 years if necessary if the nebulous “war on terror” takes that long to resolve. Under any standard that is an abuse of power and human rights.

Apparently some of the inmates allegedly cannot be tried because the evidence against them was obtained through torture, but they also can’t be released because our inhumane holding of them in perpetuity without charges has radicalized them against America.

Does that surprise anyone? If you were tossed into a prison and held for 16 years without charges being filed, I suspect you’d harbor some anger at your captors. Do we really want to give our government that kind of absolute power? That’s where tyranny begins.

Bush’s administration opened the prison, Obama vowed to close it and failed, and Trump has ordered that it be kept open indefinitely. Money has even been requested to expand facilities there for holding illegal immigrants. These actions to maintain and expand the facility are a mistake.

Guantanamo is also a travesty upon the American taxpayer. It currently costs the U.S. government about a half billion dollars a year to keep the prison open. The average annual cost per inmate is estimated to be a whopping $11 million dollars.

Contrast that cost with the less than $35,000 spent per year to maintain a federal prisoner in the United States. The responsive arguments are that it is too dangerous to house these people on U.S. soil, and that you would actually have to give them rights like charges being levied with trials. Perish the thought.

These people can be safely held in prisons in the U.S. until they are tried. America is good at imprisoning people, the world’s best if the number of people imprisoned is the yardstick. We currently have over 2.3 million people in prisons when you consider all facilities from federal and state prisons to local jails. The United States is surely capable of handling 40 more inmates.

The issue is whether we are going to provide these people basic due process rights. There are those who say our enemies have no respect for human rights, that they behead American hostages without trials and do not deserve fair treatment.

Does that mean we stoop to their level to combat that kind of evil? Where do you draw the line when you head down that slippery slope?

Our federal government needs to operate by the values we claim to hold dear as Americans. Stop wasting taxpayer money in Cuba. Close this international disgrace and bring the prisoners to the United States.

Charge the inmates for whatever crime it is you maintain they committed and give them a fair trial. That is what America once stood for, and it is time to right our moral compass if we want respect throughout the world.

When our government is allowed to violate human rights at the level happening in Cuba, our freedoms as U.S. citizens become endangered.

A failure to hold our government responsible is the first step in the deterioration of rights we all value. Our standing and respect upon the world stage is not the only thing that will be lost if our federal government is not held accountable for its behavior in Cuba.

Jesse Robison is a Pocatello native who has lived in Mexico and other places. He was educated at Idaho State University and University of Idaho. Robison works as a mediator and insurance law consultant, but his passion is public art. He has spearheaded numerous art improvements throughout Pocatello, including the Japanese garden located at Pocatello Regional Airport, and he serves on the Bistline Foundation. Robison currently resides in Pocatello.