The Obama administration is planning to transfer a new group of detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention center over the next several weeks,
The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
According to senior officials, President Barack Obama is also expected to shift the debate about the closure of the base to a fiscal issue, highlighting the cost of $2.7 million per inmate per years.
"The American people should not be spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on a facility that harms our standing in the world, damages our relationships with key allies, and emboldens violent extremists," Patrick Ventrell, a spokesman for the president's National Security Council, told the Journal.
Obama reiterated his vow on Sunday to close Guantanamo, a pledge he made on one of his first days in office in 2009. He said he would do "everything I can" to close the military prison after four more detainees were transferred to Afghanistan this weekend.
He said in an interview with CNN's Candy Crowley that the facility was "contrary to our values" in addition to being extremely expensive.
"It does not make sense for us to spend millions of dollars per individual when we have a way of solving this problem that’s more consistent with our values," he told CNN, such as transferring to U.S. prisons those who are considered too dangerous to be released.
Obama's moves will likely ignite the ire of Republican lawmakers who have insisted the base should remain open.
South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday that "rather than closing Guantanamo Bay, he should be filling up the place, because terrorism is on the march."
He told CBS News that if Obama continues his push to close down the prison, "There will be one hell of a fight between the president and Republicans and Democrats in 2015 over Guantanamo Bay," the Journal reported.
The total population of prisoners still at the detention center is 132, having dropped from 166 in spring of 2013,
the Huffington Post reported.
At its peak, Guantanamo held 684 detainees.
Earlier this month,
six inmates were released and resettled to Uruguay, the first transfer of detainees to South America.
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