The Guantánamo Bay detention center is still open, but that isn’t proof that Biden isn’t president

Among a host of unfounded reasons people offer up to falsely claim that President Joe Biden is not the commander in chief: He hasn’t shuttered the Guantánamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. 

"‘Biden’ spent over HALF of his 2020 campaign talking about how he was going to finally once and for all shut down the facilities," a June 19 Facebook post says. "Go back and painfully watch those debates with the actor already in place. They made him do speeches on it in February and September 2021 … Come on now … if he was president, he’d have the SAME powers as every other president, where’s his EO to keep his promise?" (EO presumably means executive order.)

A hashtag on the post says #HeCantCauseHeAint.

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Some advocates for closing the detention center have grown impatient that it’s still open. So far, Biden has repatriated five prisoners and freed one, bringing the current inmate population to 30 men. 

Citing one current and one former Biden administration official, NBC News reported in April that the administration "is discussing options, including a possible executive order, to further reduce the number of detainees in the coming months and ultimately close the detention facility" by the end of Biden’s current term.

A 2015 law bans transferring Guantánamo Bay prisoners to the United States. 

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stated on November 20, 2024 in a Threads post

Says Elon Musk said he would suspend X “accounts calling me fat.”

The facility remaining open is not evidence that Biden is not president. 

Former President Barack Obama, who also pledged to close Guantánamo, repatriated or resettled about 200 men. But, Vox reported, he faced legal challenges. "No president has been able to close Guantánamo because once something is created outside the law, it’s almost impossible to bring back inside the law." 

We rate claims that the detention camp remaining open is proof that Biden is not the president Pants on Fire!