America has a proud history of effective criminal justice. Traditionally, we have apprehended criminals, tried them and sentenced them in accordance with their crimes. The system is far from perfect, but it is logical and, for the most part, fair. The Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp in Cuba, however, is diametrically opposed to our proclaimed notion of justice. It violates many of the values America claims to stand for, and the sooner we bring the terrorists imprisoned there to America to face justice, the sooner America will recover from the wounds it received on that fateful September morning in 2001.

Crucial to any functioning system of justice is equal treatment for everyone in its purview. Anyone who commits a crime on American soil is subject to American law. The United States Constitution dictates exactly how the government can treat the accused. Several amendments to the Constitution, collectively the Bill of Rights and more specifically, the Fifth, Sixth and 14th amendments, were created explicitly to outlaw the treatment America is currently exhibiting toward those accused of committing crimes in the United States, now locked away in Cuba.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” while the 14th amendment applies the idea of due process to states as well as the federal government. The Sixth states: “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district where in the crime shall have been committed.” No section of the Bill of Rights lays out exceptions for nebulous terms like “acts of war.” This excuse — that the perpetrators of the attacks on America were engaged in war — are not just wrong, they’re dangerous.

Nothing separates the actions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — the so-called mastermind of the 9/11 attacks — from those of homegrown terrorists, like Timothy McVeigh, for instance. When former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain create an imaginary crime — an “act of war” — on American soil to which the Constitution does not apply, they simultaneously reject the constitutional underpinnings of the nation. Any person can be accused of perpetrating crimes which don’t actually exist and be denied their basic rights. And without a clear conception of what constitutes the law, nobody is safe.

We recognized the importance of putting a stop to imprisoning suspects ad infinitum without trial and outside of our borders. We elected Barack Obama in part for his promise to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp within a year of his presidency. Progress toward that end has been made, but Congress has set up roadblocks to complete success, making it unlikely that a resolution will come before the January deadline.

A law was passed this year prohibiting the government from bringing detainees from Guantánamo to the mainland United States except to prosecute them. Lawmakers have pronounced that allowing incarcerated terrorists within our borders would create an unacceptable risk. Aside from blatant fear-mongering, this ignores the fact that Americans would likely be safer with its enemies fully under our control in a supermax prison (the highest level of security and most secure prisons in the world; no convict has ever escaped from America’s sole Federal supermax prison, ADX Florence in Colorado).

Bringing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York for trial is a good first step toward correcting years of unconstitutional treatment at Guantánamo Bay. All those accused of perpetrating the attacks in September of 2001 or on domestic, United States soil should be brought within our borders and tried in accordance with our laws and constitution. If convicted, they should be imprisoned in the highest security prison we are capable of building, to prevent both escape and infiltration.

Detainees in Guantánamo being held as “enemy combatants” — those that have attacked American interests and our military abroad – should be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions, given a military trial (which need not take place in the mainland United States and without the luxuries afforded to those subject to the Constitution), and either freed or imprisoned (again, their imprisonment need not be in the United States) in a more legally transparent way — not indefinitely and not without some evidence. Although it may (debatably) meet the minimum requirements of international legality for detaining “enemy combatants” accused of crimes or hostile actions not in the mainland United States, Guantánamo Bay should be shut down to eliminate any question of its legality and thereby remove the international lighting rod the facility has become.

President Obama, with his background in law, clearly understands the need to safely shut down the Guantánamo Bay Detention Camp and to try and punish domestic terrorists domestically while keeping foreign “enemy combatants” off the battlefield. Now it’s time for Congress and the public to throw their support behind accomplishing that goal. We should be welcoming captured domestic terrorists back to the mainland United States to face their punishment — imprisonment, freedom or execution, as the case may be; their vacation in Cuba should come to an end.

Associate Editor Brett Weinstein is a College senior from Scarsdale, N.Y.