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The Evaluation Of Legal Rights Granted To Non-Citizen Detainees, Julia Oldershaw

Honors Undergraduate Theses

For over two decades, the United States imprisoned and detained hundreds of suspected terrorists at the United States Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. While many of these prisoners were suspected of being terrorists, no formal charges were ever levied against the detainees. All of the prisoners detained were considered non-citizens of the United States. They were not citizens of either Cuba or the United States. Instead, they were citizens of another country. While the legal precedent in the United States' territorial jurisdiction is that non-citizens are granted specific Constitutional rights, Guantánamo Bay was a legal black hole to which …