FLORENCE, Colo. -- The Unabomber lives here. So do the men best known as the shoe bomber and the Boston Marathon bomber, as well as a 9/11 conspirator and 10,000 other inmates from the infamous to the obscure.
They are all sealed behind thick walls and razor-wire fences in the rolling high desert of southern Colorado.
As President Barack Obama prepares to put forward long-awaited plans for closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, this corner of Colorado, home to seven state and four federal prisons, is in an uproar over the possibility that those detainees could be incarcerated nearby.
"It just doesn't make sense to bring these dangerous people to our ground," said Sheriff James Beicker of Fremont County, one of 40 Colorado sheriffs who signed a letter to Obama last week opposing any Guantanamo transfers to Colorado. "Why put any extra level of threat to our state or my county?"
The sheriff said he had spoken with a handful of residents so angry that they had vowed to meet any arriving detainees at the gates with guns.
The apprehension in this prison town reflects a broader opposition that has stymied Obama's promise to close Guantanamo. While some people say the prisoners would be safely locked away, like the thousands of others who already are, other residents worry their community could become a target. And some have legal objections to imprisoning dozens of detainees who have not been convicted of crimes.
Many residents say they feel perfectly safe even though several convicted terrorists are imprisoned at the federal prison complex. But they do not want the added notoriety of housing 61 Guantanamo detainees. Tourism-reliant Fremont County recently lost out on an effort to attract a call center, and a recent sexting scandal at the high school in nearby Canon City reportedly scared away a business looking to relocate.
"We already have a bit of a public image issue," said Debbie Bell, a county commissioner.
"There's no way," said Florence Mayor Keith Ore. "Something of that magnitude could just come in and destroy this town."
Incarceration has been a defining feature of life here since the Colorado Terroritorial Correction Facility, which is still in operation, was built in 1871. Tourists arrive to fish or float in the Arkansas River or visit the pink brick downtown buildings. Officials say they embrace the prisons as well as the visitors. In 1990, for example, Florence helped attract a federal supermax prison by donating land for the complex.
Many residents have worked for one of the prisons or have relatives who do. People say they used to leave the keys in their cars so that any escaping inmates would just take the car and go, rather than risk a confrontation. A few times a year, prison teams hold escape drills in area neighborhoods.
For the past few years, there has been talk that the prison complexes around Florence could one day play a central part in Obama's promise to shut down Guantanamo, even though Congress passed measures to bar any prisoner transfers to American soil. This month, the Senate passed an annual military bill containing similar restrictions. A White House spokesman said Obama would sign the measure, but he also said it would not affect the administration's position on closing Guantanamo. On Sunday, the Defense Department said it had transferred five lower-level Yemeni detainees from Guantanamo to the United Arab Emirates.
Last month, Pentagon officials visited the federal supermax prison on the edge of Florence and an empty state prison a few miles down the road, part of a handful of site inspections they have conducted. A month earlier, military officials scouted sites at a South Carolina naval brig and an army prison barracks in Kansas.
The visits have not been secret -- the Pentagon told Congress and issued a news release -- but local officials bristled because they never received word of the visit and have not heard from the administration. The police chief in Florence, Mike DeLaurentis, said he was the only local official who had any contact with the survey team -- he happened to pull them over for a traffic stop.
"No answers from anybody," Bell said.
Cory Gardner, the Republican senator from Colorado who opposes transfers to his state from Guantanamo, said he had recently heard a barrage of opposition from constituents during events held by telephone, when he visited towns in the state or when he walked through the Denver airport.
A Section on 11/18/2015