HARDIN, Mont. — On Capitol Hill, politicians are dead-set against transferring some of the world’s most feared terrorists from Guantanamo to prisons on U.S. soil. But at City Hall in this impoverished town, the attitude is: Bring ‘em on.
Hardin, a dusty town of 3,400 people so desperate that it built a $27 million jail a couple of years ago in the vain hope it would be a moneymaker, is offering to house hundreds of Gitmo detainees at the empty, never-used institution.
The medium-security jail was conceived as a holding facility for drunks and other scofflaws, but town leaders said it could be fortified with a couple of guard towers and some more concertina wire. Apart from that, it is a turnkey operation, fully outfitted with everything from cafeteria trays and sweatsocks to 88 surveillance cameras.
“Holy smokes — the amount of soldiers and attorneys it would bring here would be unbelievable,” Clint Carleton said as he surveyed his mostly empty restaurant, Three Brothers Pizza. “I’m a lot more worried about some sex offender walking my streets than a guy that’s a world-class terrorist. He’s not going to escape, pop into the IGA (supermarket), grab a six-pack and go sit in the park.”
After Hardin’s six-member council passed a resolution last month in favor of taking the Guantanamo detainees, Montana’s congressional delegation was quick to pledge it would never happen.
Notwithstanding the reputation of Montanans as Second Amendment-loving gun owners, they said that putting terrorists on Montana soil could invite attacks from the detainees’ sympathizers.
“These Gitmo guys, they’re a scary bunch,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat. “You’ve got to realize what you’re getting into.”
Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer said this week that it is every state’s obligation to do its part in addressing terrorism. But he dismissed Hardin’s jail as not up to the task.
A White House spokesman on Thursday declined to comment on Hardin’s proposal and said there has been no decision on what to do with the detainees.
The jail’s No. 1 promoter, Greg Smith, executive director of Hardin’s economic development agency, said the Two Rivers Detention Center could easily be retrofitted to increase security. And while the town hasn’t had its own police force since the 1970s, Smith said the jail’s well-armed neighbors would constitute an “unofficial redneck patrol.”
While some townspeople welcome the idea as a way to produce jobs and put the jail to use, others worry that it would be too dangerous.
One of the jail’s neighbors, Bill Eshleman — a 72-year-old retired postal worker who said he keeps his .30-06 hunting rifle loaded and ready — said the detainees would invite trouble, and he would rather see them sent back where they came from.
But he joked that his rifle was “very accurate.”
His wife, Clara, squirmed uncomfortably in the face of her husband’s bravado, and said she is dead-set against Hardin becoming America’s Gitmo. As a matter of civic pride, she said she wants to put bad guys in the jail to relieve the town of what has become a community embarrassment.
“But not the Gitmos,” she said. “They’re the worst of the worst.”
Hardin — situated about an hour’s drive from Billings on the edge of the Crow Indian Reservation, not far from the Little Bighorn, where Custer made his last stand — is beset with high unemployment and a poverty rate double the national average.
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