Progress Illinois

President Obama’s executive order to shut down the unlawful Guantanamo Bay detention camp within a year has Republicans nationwide asking one question: where are we going to house the detainees? As you can see above, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart offered the appropriate response to GOP hand-wringing over Guantanamo’s shuttering last week. Now, a coterie of Indiana state senators are taking it one step further, authoring a Senate resolutiont that urges Obama not to send any detainees to the federal prison in Terre Haute. From the Indianapolis Star:

“These are extreme Muslim terrorists, ruthless terrorists housed at Guantanamo Bay for a reason,” said state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe, who drafted a resolution Tuesday and promptly got a hearing in a Senate committee.

“If they are brought onto our soil ... are they bringing us that much closer to becoming a target?”

It’s worth noting that no legislators from Terre Haute signed on to the resolution. But more generally, Republicans’ outrage is strange. For one, Gitmo was open for eight years without ever experiencing a single terrorist attack. And when has the U.S. ever expressed skepticism about its ability to incarcerate?

Indiana state prisons hold 27,132 inmates. Even more are locked up in jail. And the facility at Terre Haute is particularly strict. Not only does it include a Special Confinement Unit that houses federal inmates on death row (Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh stayed there) but the Star notes that the U.S. Bureau of Prisons converted one of the Terre Haute buildings into a special wing designed for up to 90 prisoners whose communications to the outside world have to be closely monitored.