The U.S. Department of Justice has a new priority – the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Although nearly seven years have passed since the first detainees at the Cuba facility were picked up and this new priority comes from a federal judge, don’t expect the department to stop dragging its feet.

“The time has come to move these forward,” Judge Thomas Hogan said Tuesday of the cases brought by Guantanamo prisoners challenging their detention. “Set aside every other case that’s pending … and address this case first.” His comments came during the first hearing on the question of whether the U.S. is lawfully holding the prisoners. The Washington, D.C., judge is coordinating the estimated 200 cases brought on behalf of detainees at the U.S. detention center in Cuba. An estimated 270 men are being held there, and only a handful have been charged with any crime.

His comments came less than a month after the Supreme Court ruled that the prisoners have a right to challenge their detention in court, a right known as habeas corpus. It was the high court’s third rejection of the Bush administration’s position after Sept. 11 of stripping foreign detainees of legal rights, with the backing of a Congress too willing to bow to the White House’s disregard for constitutional requirements.

After Judge Hogan’s exhortation to move things along, the Justice Department said it needed eight weeks to update and add to the evidence it used to argue for holding the detainees. “The government should be entitled to present its best case,” said Justice Department lawyer Gregory Katsas. He’s right, but seven years seems like plenty of time to have already built that case.

Judge Hogan agreed. “If it wasn’t sufficient, then they shouldn’t have been picked up,” he said.

That is the problem the Justice Department and White House are trying to unravel. The administration says it is looking for ways to release about 50 detainees. But what should the U.S. do with men who are harmless and committed no crime? What if their home country will imprison and perhaps torture them? What about those detainees who are truly dangerous and may plot a terrorist attack? What about men who have been held for seven years and because of that experience are hostile to the United States and could easily be recruited by extremist groups?

These are all difficult questions, but they should have been anticipated and answered before the United States began rounding up “terrorists” around the globe.

With pressure from Judge Hogan, these questions must be answered soon.