Washington - President Barack Obama, in his last days in the White House, must transfer the prisoners at the Guantanamo prison authorized to leave, according to an editorial in The New York Times.

The most recent statements by President-elect Donald Trump about the penitentiary are in line with its erroneous promise to keep it open and even expand it, but at the same time show that it is oblivious to the risks and costs that those measures entail, the newspaper added.

This determination of Trump makes that Obama does not have to spare efforts to transfer to the 18 authorized detainees to travel to the nations that agreed to receive them.

According to daily New York, this would leave the criminal population there in about 40 prisoners, out of the 780 men that were when the prison began operating after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Of the remaining inmates, three were convicted in the military courts and seven others are pending charges; 26 are described as too dangerous to be released.

Government officials, however, say it is almost impossible to prosecute them because they did not have a trial for years and were even tortured.

The Times refers to the need to reevaluate this criterion, because keeping those detainees in the facility forever is unsustainable for a nation that claims to adhere to the rule of law, in addition to which such a measure can only stimulate the actions of groups Extremists around the world against the United States.

Since 2009, Obama has promised to close the prison at Guantanamo, but Republicans went to great lengths to oppose the idea of prosecuting prisoners in federal courts and blocked a plan to move them to prisons in the continental United States.

Although Obama did not meet his goal, he at least managed to reduce the number of detainees, and now they are only 59 from the 242 who remained in the facility when he took office.

Since January 2002 under the administration of George W. Bush, the United States has maintained a detention center in that military enclave located in Cuban territory against the will of the government and people of the Caribbean island.