Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.
The White House has made no official comment, but the House Republicans disapprove. Rep. John Boehner’s (R-OH) spokeswoman called it an ‘ill-conceived plan’ because it would bring terrorists into the US.
I posted on this issue before here. I agree that this new plan is ill-conceived, but for a different reason. To move them all to one location to be housed and tried would just create another symbol and another Islamist recruiting tool. The detainees need to be moved to a number of supermax facilities that may need to be expanded and hardened, but are already in operation. Leavenworth and the prison in Michigan (Ionia?) may be among these, but it would be ill-advised to just pick one.