GOP Rep Introduces Measure To Prohibit Detaining American Citizens Without Due Process

As Congress passed the $662 billion defense authorization bill last week, critics worried that the bill authorized indefinite military detention for terror suspects, including American citizens, captured inside the United States. However, the bill does not change existing law on the subject, and CAP’s Ken Gude believes, “It does not limit or expand existing detention authority.”

Yet Rep. Jeff Landry (R-LA) wants to make sure. Landry told the Hill newspaper yesterday that he has asked House Armed Services Committee chair Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) to revisit the issue in the defense bill to make sure that the language does not give the U.S. government new rights to hold U.S. citizens without due process:

“We have assurances that they would work to clarify the language,” Landry told The Hill. “I have a commitment from the chairman that the type of language I have is the type of language he would use to clarify that.”

Landry has introduced H.R. 3676, which would amend the NDAA by saying that “no United States citizen may be detained against his or her will without all the rights of due process afforded to the citizen in a court ordained or established by or under Article III of the Constitution of the United States.”

As the Hill also notes, the defense bill Congress passed last week “does say explicitly that no new authority is created to detain U.S. citizens, and that the military detention language does not apply to citizens.”

Landry however fears the bill has some holes. “The problem we’ve had is that Congress over the last 30 years has just not done a good job of basically telling the administration through legislation what the confines of its power are,” Landry said. “All we’re trying to do is say look, this is what Congress is trying to intend.”