In his presidential address to Congress, Donald Trump announced his intention to keep Guantanamo Bay prison open, vowing to “load it up with some bad dudes.”

Trump tweeted that “there should be no further releases” and promised to “bring back waterboarding and a hell of a lot worse.” When asked if torture works, Trump replied, “Yes, absolutely.”

As with many things, Trump seems ignorant of (or indifferent to) the fact that waterboarding and other means of torture are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions or that the United States has passed laws outlawing torture.

As John McCain, who alone in Congress has experienced torture, said in response to Trump, “The President can sign whatever he likes, but the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.”

President Obama predicted, “History will cast a harsh judgement” on us for not closing Guantanamo. Nevertheless, he was unsuccessful in closing the prison due to Republican resistance that “placed politics above the ongoing costs to taxpayers, our relationships with our allies, and the threat posed to U.S. national security, . . . which hinders . . . our fight against terrorism.”

Only a handful of prisoners (41) remain at a facility that has cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion dollars since it opened in 2002. It currently costs more than $10 million annually for every prisoner housed there, the equivalent of providing housing for 1,000 homeless people or health care for more than 31,000 Americans. And the Trump administration has already begun a plan to spend many more millions on the facility.

Trump’s dark intentions for Guantanamo are no more evident than in his nomination of Gina Haspel as Director of the CIA. As Sen. Rand Paul, in opposition to her appointment, stated, Haspel was not only “one of the architects, designers, implementers” and top administrators of the torture program, she was guilty of destroying some of the evidence of its existence. Paul concludes, “What is known is that Haspel participated in a program that was antithetical to the ideals of this country. She destroyed evidence in defiance of our ideals.”

If Guantanamo remains open, it will cost the United States not only in dollars, but in safety, security, self-respect, international reputation, national honor, and ultimately our hard-earned and long-cherished reputation of striving for justice for all, including our enemies. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

In Robert Bolt’s A Man for All Seasons, William Roper (Sir Thomas More’s son-in-law) declares that he would “cut down every law in England” to get at the Devil, to which More counters, “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, the laws all being flat? … d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

Trump seems to feel that whatever ends he desires justifies the means in keeping Guantanamo open, even if it includes flaunting national and international law.

Under Trump, we have a government intent on flattening the laws that stand between us and tyranny. For our own safety’s sake, for humanity’s sake, whether at Guantanamo or on American soil, we cannot allow that to happen.

Brent Rushforth is an attorney who for 13 years has represented Guantanamo Bay prisoners in federal court and before the Military Commissions at Guantanamo. Robert Rees teaches religion and is director of Mormon Studies at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley.