It’s worth bearing in mind that opposition to relocating the Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland may have less to do concerns about security than with fear of a kind of infection. Take this statement from Diane Gramley, president of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania:

I don’t think the average murderer or rapist hates all Americans or hates what America stands for like the terrorist prisoners from Guantanamo. You intermix them with the prison population, and there’s the very real possibility they would influence those individuals in prison.”

Lurking beneath the surface is the sense that, even if kept in solitary confinement, these people will contaminate the homeland.