Shelby on detainees: Try them or send them back

The Obama administration should try Guantanamo detains or send them back to their home countries, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) said today.

“We’ve got these people–we either should try them or send them back where they came from,” Shelby said, cautioning that in the past, detainees who have been sent back to their home countries have re-joined terrorist organizations.

A federal judge today upheld but narrowed the Obama administration’s authority to hold detainees without trial.

Shelby repeatedly warned against releasing terrorists into the United States.

“Nobody in American wants the terrorist in their neighborhood,” Shelby said, “That’s the bottom line.”

Attorney General Eric Holder has said that no detainee the administration considers a terrorist would be released into the United States.

It’s unclear whether detainees who the administration determines are not a threat might be released into the United States or elsewhere.

“One thing we don’t want to do, I believe, is bring them back into the United States and try to rehabilitate them and put them among our own people. These are not ordinary criminals, they’re not our people, they aren’t ever going to be like us.