Hoekstra fear-mongers GTMO in Michigan

As Daphne Eviatar has written this week, the residents of Standish, Mich., are starting to turn against a proposal to send terrorism detainees from Guantanamo Bay to their town’s prison, a proposal floated by the legislature and seconded by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) to alleviate Standish’s economic woes. David Munson, the owner of a tavern in Standish, organized a town hall meeting with legislators to discuss the subject. All well and good, right?

But it looks like Munson has had someone whispering in his ear, according to The Washington Post, and that’s Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.). Munson found the economic arguments for moving the detainees to Standish compelling, until…

“He told me things that really scared the heck out of me,” Munson said. “He told me about soft targets and safe zones, that if they came to this country they would have rights, visitors and friends would come who could be jihadists.”

Those are some lurid and rather unlikely scenarios. Detainees would surely have rights — the American Civil Liberties Union is suing to obtain a memo written by the Justice Department’s David Barron about the constitutional rights that Guantanamo detainees could claim in the context of military commissions, for instance — but any transference of Guantanamo detainees is going to be accompanied by heightened security for the area. Besides, no one’s tried to blow up Butner, North Carolina to liberate Omar Abdul-Rahman.

It’s prudent to plan for the worst, but it’s fear-mongering to imply that Standish would become a Ground Zero waiting to happen.