Biden Still Wants to Close Guantánamo Prison

This article was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

President Barack Obama vowed to close it, and failed. President Trump vowed to load it up with more “bad dudes,” and has not. Now Joseph R. Biden Jr. is saying that if elected president, he would support shutting down the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — but has declined to specify how he would do it or what he would do with the 40 men held there as wartime prisoners, including the men accused of plotting the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

In response to a question, his campaign said in a statement that Mr. Biden “continues to support closing the detention center.” Echoing Mr. Obama, the statement said the prison “undermines American national security by fueling terrorist recruitment and is at odds with our values as a country.”

But Mr. Biden rarely, if ever, brings up the topic, evidence of how politically toxic it remains after intense Republican efforts to cast Mr. Obama’s initiative as endangering Americans by transferring terrorists to U.S. soil or sending them without adequate safeguards to other countries.

When asked about Guantánamo Bay in a primary debate in December, Mr. Biden, who was Mr. Obama’s vice president, blamed Congress for thwarting closure, but rather than suggest a path forward, he pivoted to another issue.