Feb. 10, 2009 - Gloria Campos and her three-month-old son were the only members of her family to board the last Red Cross plane out of Nicaragua during the revolutionary war in July 1979.

Campos, then 21, was the daughter of a high-ranking government official, who also owned a cotton farm and electricity generators. Since her father worked for President Anastasio Somoza, there was a target on his back.

"All the guerrillas (Sandinistas) the people that were in the mountains were coming into the city of Managua. And of course they were happy because they were celebrating. I think that that was the only time in my life that I have learned and felt defeat. It was not pleasant," said Campos, now 51, who now lives in Murphysboro in southern Illinois.

Nicaraguans would engage in a civil war for the next 11 years. The FSLN left-wing guerrillas, known as the Sandinistas, came to power and they fought against the Contras supported by Somoza. The Somoza family had controlled the government from 1936 until the 1979 revolutionary war.

The Sandinistas, the socialist government, fought the U.S.- funded, anti-communist Contras during the Regan Administration. The Sandinistas were funded by the Soviets and Cubans and they stayed in power until 1990.

Campos is one of more than 61,000 refugees that have come from Latin American and Caribbean countries such as Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, El Salvador and Colombia since 1975, according to the U.S. State Department. In 2007, only 2,981 refugees were admitted into the United States from this region.

Campos recalled the day she left Nicaragua. She boarded a plane at the airport and her baby was sick with an E. coli infection. All she took with her was her passport, clothes and formula for her son. She hid $50 in her pocket so they guards wouldn't find it. "My purse was taken away," she said.

A guard also took a knife and opened the seal on a can of baby formula

"(He wanted) to check if I had money in there," Campos said.

Campos said when she was at the airport that people rushed to get into her plane, and that some of them were shot by the guerillas. "They were killing to get in there," Campos said. "There was a rush, someone said. Run! Run! Run! Get in there."

It was an unpressurized cargo plane. Campos said she was freezing, and she tried to keep her son warm by holding him close her body as they flew to Guatemala.

In Guatemala, she only had permission to stay for 30 days. Campos was married and her husband was studying in Mexico, where he was waiting for her. She tried to apply for a visa to go Mexico without success.

Campos said she stayed with family friends in Guatemala, and got a visa extension for another 30 days. She got in contact with an old family friend, whose father used to be a congressman and the Nicaraguan ambassador to Guatemala, and had still had diplomatic connections.

"I told him that I'm stuck. I cannot get into Mexico, because the Mexican government is not allowing any Nicaraguans to go across the border legally," Campos said.

Then she received a phone call in the middle of the night.

"Gloria don't ask questions, just go to the Mexican embassy," the voice said. "They will give you a visa so you can be reunited with you husband."

Campos said the next morning she took a taxi to the embassy, did not ask questions and said, "I'm Gloria Pereira Campos, they told me to come over here to get my visa."

Campos boarded a plane for Mexico that same afternoon where she reunited with her husband. He got a job as a chemical engineer for a sugar cane company.

They saved up enough money to plan a vacation to Carbondale, where her parents had settled when they fled Nicaragua. The family knew then Sen. Paul Simon who encouraged them to apply for political asylum, which they received.

Campos became a U.S. citizen in 1995 and now runs a small cleaning business. She also is active in Illinois Republican politics in Jackson County and is the Illinois chairperson and Midwest representative of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, a political organization that promotes involvement of the Hispanic community.

Angel Garcia, the president of the Chicago assembly, has known Campos almost five years.

"You would think that someone who had to flee her country for political reasons would be adverse to political activism. Gloria does not retreat from politics. She engages the political arena. Gloria has been more active than native born citizens to the point that today she is the Midwest leader of a Hispanic political organization," Garcia said.

Vicenta "Vickey" Miller from southern Illinois is on the board of the Illinois Federation of Republican Women and has known Campos over 15 years. Miller has witnessed all of the hard work Campos has dedicated to politics during their many adventures traveling the state together. "What Gloria has to share is immensely important, people can learn from her life experiences especially the Hispanic community. Friends admire all her efforts and hard work she has dedicated to volunteering for this country, not only nationally, but also in her community. She is an outstanding speaker, and shares her talents and mentors others to become leaders," Miller said.

Campos added, "To the Latino community it is important for us to speak up. We have a voice. We don't need to whisper anymore. We can talk. We chose the United States to be our country. We have chosen the American flag to be our flag. We need to participate in the democratic process and embrace the concept that politics is in our lives daily."

Campos returned to Nicaragua to visit with her family for a theater dedication in León to her mother in January 2004.

"I saw the volcanoes and the lake, all green - the land of poetry, music and no army on the streets. I knew I was OK. It is a beautiful country but for many years we were a family with out a country, without a flag," Campos said.

Campos described her heart as triangular shaped like Nicaragua, but she said it is colored, red, white, and blue.

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Jan. 8, 2009 – Prisoners sit in an 8-by 6-foot cell, built from a wire frame. The cells sit in two rows facing each other out in the open air. They are covered with a tin roof, which traps the heat of the sun. There are no fans or air conditioner provided.

As President-elect Barack Obama takes office, one of his highest executive priorities is to close Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, but the new administration will face difficult challenges on how to process the detainees for trial and possible release.

Jeffrey Colman, a Chicago attorney who has represented prisoners at Guantanamo, said he still has two clients imprisoned there indefinitely. 

One of his client's is a 40-year-old Shiite-Muslim who was born in Iraq. He was turned in because he was an opponent of Saddam Hussain's regime.

Originally he was a school teacher in Iraq, then took a leave of absence because authorities allegedly claimed after 9-11 he was a member of the Taliban, which is predominantly Sunni-Muslims.

He moved to Afghanistan to work at an orphanage.  Authorities turned him in for ransom with no allegations against him.  The only evidence to prove his client was a member of the organization is that he worked at an orphanage, which was funded by an al-Qaeda humanitarian organization, Colman said.

"Guantanamo has become an evil symbol to the world. Closing it would show that the U.S. is going back to its bed rock principles," Colman said.

Colman's firm has represented 19 clients at Guantanamo, and he said prisoners experience extraordinary isolation by not having any contact with their family.  All of the prisoners are Muslim.  There are no checks on conditions or conduct, some prisoners have spent four to seven years in detention, he said.

"There is no question that some of these men warrant charges.  A great number will be released and some will return to their home countries. The trickiest part is to find some country for those who can't return to their home country," Colman said.

Announcing the closure of the detention center is an indication the new administration plans on changing the course of action on foreign policy.

Colman said the new administration will be challenged to find countries for some of these men after Guantanamo is closed. A new administration brings new personnel to face the problems of these matters, they will have almost 250 cases to review, however complex.

"I think he (Obama) is going to close Guantanamo.  I would be shocked if it is open a year from now as a prison," Colman said.

Colman said many activists have set a deadline for the Obama Administration to close the prison by the beginning of March.

Larry Cox the spokesperson for Amnesty International, a human rights organization said there has been a long call for the U.S. government to close Guantanamo and either fairly try or release the remaining detainees.  The human rights organization urges President-elect Barack Obama to announce a date for the closure of Guantanamo, issue an executive order to end torture and support a commission of inquiry during his first 100 days in office.

Colman predicts about 50 of the prisoners would be brought to the U.S. and charged with crimes. They will be put to trial and if there is evidence, be convicted and imprisoned or they would be acquitted and sent home.

In early December the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that detainees have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in regular U.S. courts. 

The U.S. government still declines that Guantanamo Bay is a prisoner war camp because of the Geneva Conventions. Close to 790 have been imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, currently over 525 men have been released with 55 percent to this date have not had charges filed against them.  

"If these men are the worst of the worst, how in the world is the Bush Administration releasing all these terrorists?" said Colman.

Almost 60 detainees have been cleared for release.

"We should have apologized to these men and their families. We should fight terrorism at every turn, but we should also admit our mistakes," Colman said.

Bob Moss, a retired district judge said the U.S. is now hinting that they are going to do an investigation without any prosecutions.

"Put them into the federal court system, now we have changed the trial method. We need to examine the problems, what evidence will be disclosed and what is not disclosed. The problem with national security is not about where the case is going to be tried, it is about what are we going to do with the detainees," Moss said.

President-elect Obama's key issues while campaigning is that he would "restore habeas corpus" to the detainees, but more than 100 detainees have been classified as not releasable because they pose a threat to national security. Calls to Obama's transition team for comment were not returned.

Scott Silliman, a national security law professor at Duke Law said President-elect Obama wants to close Guantanamo.  He said it would be easier said than done. "Before you close the place, you have to figure out what you are going to do with the detainees," Silliman said.

Silliman said the major problem is that some of the detainees native countries are not willing to take them back under the stipulations given by the U.S. to keep them under surveillance or in maximum security detention, especially because they have never had been charged with a crime. 

The Obama administration will also be challenged on what to do with future terrorists.

Silliman has formerly served as head counsel to the commander of the Air Force.  He said he favors detainees being tried by a military commission of court-marshal, because the trial can be held outside the United States. If the trial were brought to a U.S. court, some of the evidence that was gathered would not be admissible because it was acquired through the means of torture.  He said if Guantanamo should be closed, then the detainees should be moved to the detention facility in Afghanistan, then the responsibility will be shared with another country.

"Americans want to see those responsible for the 9-11 attacks brought to justice and by doing so in a matter that maintains our American values and our claim that we are a nation under the rule of law," Silliman said.

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