Donald Trump said Thursday he supported trying US citizens suspected of terrorism in military tribunals, perhaps at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.
“I would say they could be tried there, that would be fine,” Trump said ahead of a speech in Miami, according to the Miami Herald.
President George W. Bush authorized the trial of non-citizens who engage or support acts of terrorism after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but a U.S. citizen has never been tried in military courts under that order, according to CNN.
Trump was asked about the history of the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay.
“I want to make sure that if we have radical Islamic terrorists, we have a very safe place to keep them,” he told the Herald, adding that President Obama is “allowing people to get out that are terrible people.”
Most constitutional experts and several senior Republican senators — including Sen. John McCain — strongly opposed proposals to try Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, one of the Boston Marathon bombers and a naturalized U.S. citizen, in military court.