Now that President Obama has taken over the office of the president, one of the first things on his agenda is to close the US prison facility located in Cuba, known as Guantanamo, and he has made the order to close the prison by the end of the year. That facility has been at the center of a lot of controversy given that it had been set up and run outside of US law. With the closing of the facility, the issue of where to then harbor those prisoners comes into question. In fact, a harbor just might factor into that answer. One republican congressman has proposed sending the Guantanamo prisoners to Alcatraz, in the San Francisco Bay.
Republican Congressman Bill Young (FL) has suggested sending the prisoners to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hometown of San Francisco and housing them on the island prison which has not been used as a prison facility since the mid-sixties, but since it was absorbed into the Golden Gate National Recreation Area as a national park in the early seventies, it has remained one of San Francisco’s biggest sightseeing attractions for tourists.
While the congressman who is on the subcommittee for defense has not spoken with the speaker about his idea, he did in-fact make the proposal to the president’s staff during a meeting regarding the Guantanamo facility and the plans for transitioning those prisoners to new detention facilities. Given the apprehension over detaining prisoners on US soil who are suspected of terrorist connections and dealings, the island of Alcatraz was presumably proposed for its isolation in the San Francisco Bay just beyond the famous Golden Gate Bridge.
