Federal officials are scheduled to tour a state prison in rural Michigan today as a potential site for housing detainees from the prison in Guantanamo Bay, reports the New York Times. The prison is a maximum-security facility in Standish, northwest of Detroit. It is among eight facilities the state is preparing to close because of reduced revenues.
Although the Guantánamo detainees are not presumed to be security threats, no state has thus far been friendly to the idea of housing them. The House and Senate voted in May to bar the resettlement of detainees in the U.S. and prohibited spending $50 million for closing Guantánamo until after the administration submitted a detailed plan. Michigan may have more reason than other states to welcome the money that would come with housing detainees. Michigan has cut 10,000 employees since 2000, leaving it with about as many state workers as it had in the early 1970s.