Roy Blunt: “I cannot believe anyone in this House would want violent criminals from other countries who somehow get here to be able…”

“I cannot believe anyone in this House would want violent criminals from other countries who somehow get here to be able to be released in our country. This amendment allows that those criminals would be detained. There is a great example of a Jordanian who was convicted in Jordan of conspiracy to bomb a Jordanian school for American children. He is convicted of a conspiracy where his goal, his target, was to kill American children. He somehow got to this country. Under the current interpretation of the courts, we cannot send him back to Jordan because he might be tortured, but we also cannot detain him. So in that interpretation this person is likely to be set free in some community in the United States, a person who is conspiring to kill American children in Jordan. So we would put him in a community of the United States that is full of American children, nobody but American children, to kill in that community?”