January 28, 2014: In his annual State of the Union address, President Obama reiterated his intent to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay. He called upon Congress to lift the restrictions on transferring detainees, stating that “we counter terrorism not just through intelligence and military action but by remaining true to our constitutional ideals and…

The oral history process begins far before the interview starts. The dialogues are far longer than the soundbite portraits they often become. The process by which a lead – possibly just a name or a phone number – becomes a historical source, is incredibly personal and fraught. A person’s memories are a vast and interesting…

My classmate and I recently sat down with Harvard Law Professor Deborah Anker for an interview on the role of immigration law in the Haitian refugee crisis at Guantanamo. One of the first court cases that jumped to Anker’s mind was the Supreme Court case Jean v. Nelson (1985). Decided a few years before the crisis, the…

January 15, 1993: The commencement of Operation Able Manner saw U.S. Coast Guard and naval ships patrolling the Windward Passage, with the mission of interdicting Haitian migrants trying to make their way from Haiti to Cuba by boat. The Operation lasted until November 1994: in that time over 25,000 Haitians were interdicted. January 12, 2014:…

Those of us in the UNCG Public History program who have been working on the Guantánamo Public Memory Project spent the month of November and beginning of December finalizing GTMO & GSO, our cohort’s way of tying the underlying themes of the national traveling exhibit to our community. After months of hard work it was…

In creating our digital exhibit (entitled “GTMO in MSP”) that will accompany the Guantánamo Public Memory Project when it comes to St. Paul, MN, my group focused on the surveillance and detention of immigrant populations in Minneapolis and St. Paul as a way to connect the local context to the issues surrounding Guantánamo. One of…