Minnesota governor Tim Walz, who was named Kamala Harris’s vice presidential pick on Tuesday, pushed to close the Guantanamo Bay prison camp and move its terrorist captives into holding facilities in the United States. His position put him to the left of other prominent Minnesota Democrats like Amy Klobuchar, but Gitmo, Walz said, is a “serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East.”

As a House member representing Minnesota’s First Congressional District, Walz voted against a 2009 measure that would have barred the federal government from shutting down Gitmo and relocating terrorists housed there to American cities. Walz railed against the U.S. detention camp as an obstacle to peace in the Middle East. He also argued that Minnesota’s criminal justice facilities could “handle” housing Gitmo terrorists.

“Walz said he thinks the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay is a serious obstacle to peace in the Middle East,” MPR News reported in June 2009, shortly after Walz returned from a “fact-finding trip to the Middle East.”

“Walz said Guantanamo should be closed, and the detainees there should be dealt with appropriately. He said that could include care at the Federal Medical Center in Rochester,” a federal prison in Minnesota for inmates who require long-term medical care.

Walz’s crusade to close Gitmo puts him in close company with some of Harris’s top campaign advisers.