Obama administration officials are up to something. Something most Americans likely figured they would never do and many Americans — including myself — are, or at least will be, angry about: They took a page from the Bush years. The Obama administration seems to be undertaking an executive order that, if enacted, would reassert the president’s authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, thus denying their writ of habeas corpus.

Literally “You shall have the body” in Latin, habeas corpus is a legal action through which a person can seek relief from the unlawful detention of himself or herself. In the United States, the Constitution protects this in Article I, Section 9, stating that “The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

So much for the Obama who claimed to vehemently oppose the denial of due process to “unlawful enemy combatants” back when the Bush administration re-legalized this practice through the Military Commissions Act in October 2006.

Furthermore, so much for Boumediene v. Bush, a summer 2008 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the denial of habeas corpus rights to those detained at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base was unconstitutional and that all have the right to a full federal court hearing in which they can be informed of and have a chance to contest the accusations against them.

And so much, lastly and most depressingly, for the Obama of the quite recent past, who in January 2009 issued an executive order regarding Guantanamo and its detainees. While most of the press debated the feasibility and/or intelligence of his call for the prompt closure of the detention center’s facilities, this current order makes Section 2, part c, quite relevant. As that bit of the order states, “The individuals currently detained at Guantanamo have the constitutional privilege of the writ of habeas corpus.”

So why, we of the public might wonder, is the Obama administration doing this? One of Obama’s very first promises made as president was a quick closing of Guantanamo, and the pressure to fulfill this promise — not only to boost his own political image, but to symbolically send the message of an America that does not torture or stray from its constitutional ideals — is on.

But ever since Obama first made the promise in January, constant debate about where and how to release or prosecute Guantanamo detainees has made reaching a quick agreement between the administration and Congress on a new detention system seem impossible. In a speech delivered in May, Obama put this uncertainty on full display, outlining the potential options of dealing with detainees through criminal trials, overhauled military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention.

Yet without at least some basic level of agreement between the executive and the legislative branches, emptying Guantanamo by January 2010 — the deadline that Obama set for himself — simply won’t happen.

Out of the 242 detainees who were imprisoned at Guantanamo when Obama took office, 11 have been released or transferred, one committed suicide, and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court. That leaves 229 detainees who would need to be moved in the next seven months, and while about half of their cases have been reviewed by the Department of Justice, officials involved in the process have concluded that approximately 90 detainees cannot be charged or released due to many reasons, the chief among which is torture-tainted evidence.

So the Obama administration’s only choices seem to be to come up short on this promise or to employ the executive order. The choice seems to have been made, with dozens of detainees soon to be scattered throughout the country at various U.S. prisons, habeas corpus-free.

The most tangible result would be an empty Guantanamo and an Obama promise fulfilled — likely with a great photo of Obama locking some big Guantanamo door to boot. The more important result, however, would be a president who has sacrificed a constitutional privilege that he promised to protect and a healthy relationship with the legislative branch for an executive order that will symbolize the very same presidential unilateralism that Bush employed and the courts have worked so hard to finally undo. So while closing Guantanamo’s doors before January would surely look like change, the method that now seems required to make this possible is, unfortunately, more of the same.

– Steve Adams is a graduate student in journalism and mass communication from Annapolis, Md.