Decision on "Michigan Gitmo" still unclear

The Obama Administration this week ruled out the possibility of Kansas holding transferred prisoners from Guantanamo Bay. This leaves the soon-to-be-closed prison in Standish as the only other prison publicly up for consideration.

State lawmakers aren't sure if the Standish prison is more likely to receive Gitmo detainees now that the Obama administration has ruled out the Kansas prison.

But Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has always thought bringing the detainees to Michigan is a bad idea.

"In the long term, what it does is it identifies Michigan as a state that was so desperate that it needed to take in the Gitmo detainees to get the economy rolling," Hoekstra says. "I think there might be a very small, short term help to our economy, but it would be a big black eye to the state of Michigan from a promotional standpoint."

Hoekstra says he actually thinks it's unlikely the prisoners will be coming to Michigan, adding that the fact that the Standish prison is a state prison, and not federal, would present a lot of obstacles for lawmakers.

 

The Obama administration has set this January as a deadline for deciding whether or not to ship Guantanamo detainees to the U.S.



   
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