Closing the Guantánamo Bay, military prison could one day result in transferred terrorism detainees walking free on the American mainland with no ability by U.S. authorities to deport them, according to an immigration expert who has studied the issue.

Dan Cadman, a fellow at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies, produced a report outlining some of the little-discussed implications of such a move — including the possibility that the detainees could fight their expulsion from the country if they are released from prison. The United States has been routinely sending prisoners abroad from Gitmo.

“There are going to be immigration consequences, and they’re not going to be good,” Cadman said in an interview.

Since the beginning of his first term, President Obama has vowed to close Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, which he argues gives the United States a black eye abroad and serves as a terrorist recruitment tool. The president in February submitted a nine-page plan to close the facility. Although the administration has been blocked by a series of defense spending measures that require Guantánamo to stay open, those restrictions must be renewed each year.

Cadman said that, should the prison be closed, the legal mechanism that most likely would be used to transfer the prisoners to America would be an immigration “parole,” which lets the president authorize the presence of non-immigrants within U.S. borders. But doing so could open up a slew of unintended consequences, Cadman said

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He said it is a virtual certainty that the prisoners would seek relief from indefinite detention in federal court and would be on firmer ground to argue that their presence on U.S. soil makes them eligible for the full range of constitutional guarantees of due process. Until now, courts have ruled that as “enemy combatants” held outside the United States — the base in Cuba is leased, not owned, by the federal government — detainees do not enjoy those rights.

The prisoners likely first would make their case to immigration law judges and then to the Board of Immigration Appeals. After that, they would be free to appeal to a federal district judge. Either side could then challenge a ruling in front of an appellate court. Ultimately, Cadman said, the issue likely would wind up before the Supreme Court.

The Justice Department offered assurances to Congress in 2014 that former Guantánamo detainees would have no rights under immigration law.

“We are not aware of any case law, statute, or constitutional provision that would require the United States to grant any Guantanamo detainee the right to remain permanently in the United States, and Congress could, moreover, enact legislation explicitly providing that no such statutory right exists,” the letter states.

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But Cadman said it is “not a convincing letter.” He said no law by Congress could supersede international treaties and the statutes that implement them, or the Constitution, itself.

“There is no way to avoid the applicability of our signing those agreements,” he said. “Those are not going to be trumped by anything.”

The result, Cadman argued, is that the United States for a variety of reasons might be stuck with detainees who do not get convicted of crimes in civilian courts. He said that could happen if prosecutors do not have enough evidence to meet the standards in a regular court proceeding or, more likely, authorities deem a prosecution too likely to result in the revelation of classified information.

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Detainees in that situation no longer could be held. The same would apply to terror suspects who are convicted and then serve their prison sentences. Deporting a former detainee in either circumstance might not be possible if his home country refuses to take him. In addition, former detainees might fight deportation by claiming that they would be tortured in their home country.

Under the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signatories are barred from deporting people to countries were there are substantial grounds for believing they would be tortured.

“It’s going to be hard for the government to argue that might not happen when our own State Department issues reports on these activities in a lot of those countries,” Cadman said.

The alternative is maintaining the status quo in which Guantánamo detainees are in indefinite limbo.

“That’s ugly, but it’s not nearly as ugly has having them on our sovereign shore where we know the Constitution would kick in,” he said.