The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed by President Obama into law Dec. 31, contains a sweeping worldwide indefinite detention provision.

“The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield,”  said ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero.

The ACLU believes that any military detention of American citizens or others within the United States is unconstitutional and illegal, including under the NDAA. In addition, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war, according to the ACLU statement.