When the Obama administration floated Michigan’s Standish Maximum Security Correctional Facility as a possible landing point for Guantanamo Bay detainees yesterday, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and several state legislators swiftly condemned the idea. But residents of the nearby town are perfectly willing to take them, if it saves the endangered prison and its 340 jobs, the Washington Post reports.
Desperate as residents are to save Standish Max, many are still nervous about taking the detainees. “That scares me,” said one teacher. “We have high-risk prisoners there now, but not terrorists.” Others fear corrections officers will lose jobs even if the detainees come. “They’ll want their own personnel, there will be CIA all over the place,” predicted one local union leader. (More prison stories.)