The head of the Senate Homeland Security Committee says President Obama’s decision to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is handicapping the nation’s intelligence capabilities.

“The fact that President Obama has committed himself to closing Guantanamo Bay, we haven’t been capturing, we haven’t been detaining,” said Sen. Ron Johnson R-Wis. “We literally have been purposefully, because of this purposeful policy, flying blind in terms of intelligence.”

Johnson also warned that the president’s move to shutter Gitmo runs counter to his own plan to degrade and defeat the Islamic State because it limits the ability of the intelligence community to detain and gather information from captured operatives of the terror group. Johnson noted that over 90 of the “worst of the worst” that could never return to their home countries are presently being held at the prison.