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Mich. prison considered to replace Guantanamo

STANDISH, Mich. — Federal officials visited a maximum-security prison in rural Michigan on Thursday to assess its suitability to house Guantanamo Bay inmates.

Representatives of the Defense, Justice and Homeland Security departments toured the prison in Standish, 145 miles north of Detroit.

The Standish prison and a military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., are being considered to house the detainees if the prison at the Navy base in Cuba is closed by 2010, as ordered by President Barack Obama.

The Guantanamo Bay facility houses 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters.

Some local residents favor bringing the detainees to Standish if necessary to keep the prison from closing. The prison is the region’s largest employer, with about 340 workers, and its closing would really harm the local economy, Republican state Rep. Tim Moore said. The region’s unemployment rate is more than 17 percent.

Others fear bringing the Guantanamo detainees to Standish would make the town a target.

“The problem I have is, you almost are putting a bull’s eye on the whole entire area. There are just too many things that could go wrong,” said Tom Kerrins, the chief steward for the Michigan Corrections Organization, the union representing prison workers in Standish.

Kerrins, 49, said the union opposes sending the Gitmo prisoners to Standish in part because it doubts the jobs of watching over them would go to the state officers working there now and would instead go to federal officers.

“They’re still going to kick us down the road. They’re going to use their own people,” Kerrins said Thursday outside the prison.

Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that he would ask the departments of Defense and Justice to lead a delegation to visit Guantanamo Bay “to better understand the special circumstances and the challenges that these detainees present by moving them to Michigan.”

Hoekstra, who is running for Michigan governor in 2010, is opposed to moving the prisoners to the state.

“Allowing state and local officials to see firsthand these detainees and Guantanamo Bay is necessary for them to understand the challenges and risks,” he said in a statement.