Pentagon looking for US locations to house Guantanamo detainees

Earlier, Senator Pat Roberts, a Republican from the state of Kansas, issued blistering remarks at the Obama administration to fight against the administration's efforts to house Guantanamo detainees inside his state.

"Congress has consistently stopped Obama by law from moving a single detainee to the US," said Roberts in a statement. "Not on my watch will any terrorist be placed in Kansas."

As his presidency is entering its final stage, Obama recently launched a renewed push to fulfil one of his promises of 2008 election campaign by closing Guantanamo Bay.

According to officials familiar with the Obama administration's plan, the White House initially sought to transfer some of the 116 Guantanamo detainees to either a federal prison in Thomson, Illinois, or the naval brig in South Carolina.

However, the Justice Department later said it could not support the use of the Thomson federal prison, since former US Attorney General Eric Holder pledged publicly in 2012 that his agency would not relocate Guantanamo detainees to Thomson prison when the Justice Department purchased the prison from the state of Illinois.

The challenges of relocating part of the prison population at Guantanamo Bay have long been plaguing the Obama administration. Under the current US law, the White House is banned from spending money to move detainees to US homeland.

Meanwhile, apart from the part of Guantanamo population to be brought to the United States, whose number still remains elusive for the administration, the White House was currently struggling to clear a backlog of another 52 detainees who would be transferred home or to a third country.

The majority of the 52 prisoners come from Yemen, but as violence and terrorist attacks continue to convulse Yemen, the Obama administration would have to locate other countries willing to accommodate those prisoners.