The re-election of the populist Republicans was received with fear by families and the dozens of former Guantanamo prisoners [Getty]
While the world caught its breath watching the US presidential election, Yemeni national Mansoor Adayfi felt a suffocating sense of dread after the results were announced.
He watched in horror from his new home in Serbia, where he was released in 2016 after spending over 14 years without charge in Guantanamo Bay, at the comeback of Donald Trump as he swept the seven swing states in the US, guaranteeing that he would become the country’s 47th president.
The re-election of the populist Republicans was received with fear by their families and the dozens of former prisoners still enduring the aftermath of their imprisonment.
Adayfi argues the new government has shattered any hope for the closure of the infamous naval base.
Today, 30 men remain detained in the remote prison camp. Of those, 16 have been cleared for release. Others, dubbed “forever prisoners”, languish in legal limbo while military commissions drag on with no clear resolutions to their cases.
During the election campaign, both the Republican leader and his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris avoided addressing Guantanamo Bay.
This silence, Adayfi says, perpetuates a “dangerous legacy”.
“By failing to acknowledge Guantanamo Bay, they both continued the legacy of the War on Terror – a war that has been shaped not only by the violence championed by the American government but a whole lack of accountability over the lives shattered by their policies,” he tells The New Arab.
For the former detainee, Trump’s re-election bid came with a sense of déjà vu that things will get worse. The right-wing frontrunner has long championed the prison’s continued operation, even suggesting during his 2016 campaign that it should be filled with “bad dudes”.
In his first premiership, he signed an executive order to keep the facility open, halting the release of dozens of cleared detainees.
To Adayfi, these policies embody a broader threat. “Trump doesn’t just want to keep Guantanamo open, he wants to multiply it. Whether it’s immigrants or so-called ‘enemy combatants,’ he’s looking for excuses to expand a system of abuse,” he told The New Arab.
The new US president’s pick for defence secretary Pete Hegserth – a National Guard veteran and Fox News presenter – has also sounded the alarm among human rights activists.
Hegserth is a former Guantanamo prison guard and had backed calls to keep the facility open.
“Hegseth wasn’t even inside the prison. He didn’t see the torture, the abuses. But now he’s one of its loudest defenders. That’s the danger of Guantanamo – it creates myths that people like Hegseth use to justify more suffering,” Adayfi says.
‘More Guantanamos are coming’
Despite promises from both main parties to close the facility, it has remained a delicate political fixture across administrations.
“The prison has always been a political tool in US politics,” Adayfi adds. “Both parties use it when it suits them, but neither addresses the human lives destroyed by it.”
Trump has allegedly vowed to “fill Guantanamo” with and resurrect long-dormant laws like the Alien Enemies Act to target and deport illegal migrants.
If the 226-year law is approved in Congress, people considered ‘hostile to the nation’ will be “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies”.
Although the new Trump government has not specified the contents of this proposed policy, Adayfi believes the incoming president’s rhetoric signals a deeper danger – the normalisation of Guantanamo-like practices within US borders.
“If Trump is willing to keep Guantanamo open, what’s stopping him from building more camps? Torture. Family separation. Death. That’s the road we’re on,” Adayfi says.
And it’s not just detainees who are at risk, he warns, and Trump’s return to the White House makes Gitmo’s closure even less likely.
“This is about everyone – Muslim communities, ethnic minorities, anyone can become a target under Trump’s policies,” he said.
“If the current administration doesn’t act soon, the men cleared for release will still be waiting when the next administration comes. And under the Republicans, they will never leave.”
