WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s plan outlining the long-stalled effort to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, expected in the coming week, includes details suggesting that the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado is one suitable site to send detainees whom officials believe should never be released, administration officials said.

The plan represents a last-gasp effort by the Obama administration to convince staunch opponents in Congress that dangerous detainees who can’t be transferred safely to other countries should be housed in a U.S.-based prison.

The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a revised $607 billion bill that restricts President Obama’s efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. The Associated Press

Some Colorado politicians are dead-set against the Colorado State Penitentiary II in Canon City accepting Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Associated Press

According to administration officials, the plan makes no recommendations on which of seven U.S. sites is preferred and provides no rankings. But it lists the prison sites in Colorado, South Carolina and Kansas that a Pentagon assessment team reviewed in recent months and mentions advantages and disadvantages for the facilities.

The Centennial facility has advantages that could outweigh the disadvantages there, according to officials, but no details were available and no conclusions have been reached.

Any decision to select a U.S. facility would require congressional approval – something U.S. lawmakers say is unlikely. At the same time, dangerous prisoners are not new to Colorado. The Supermax in Florence, Colorado, which has been dubbed “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” already holds convicted terrorists, including Unabomber Ted Kaczynski and Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the conspirators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

DISSENT FROM CONGRESS

The Pentagon plan also lays out the broader effort to reduce the detainee population at Guantanamo, through transfers to other countries. The center now holds 112 detainees, and 53 are eligible for transfer. The rest are either facing trial by military commission or the government has determined that they are too dangerous to release but are not facing charges.

In order to approve a transfer, Defense Secretary Ash Carter must conclude that the detainees will not return to terrorism or the battlefield upon release and that there is a host country willing to take them and guarantee they will secure them.

As President Obama heads into his final year in office, the effort is part of a push to keep his election promise to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. But he is facing an uphill battle with Congress.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., has asked for an administration plan for the shutdown of Guantanamo. The Pentagon’s assessment team visits over the last few months were part of the effort to provide options for the relocation of Guantanamo detainees.

“I’ve asked for six and a half years for this administration to come forward with a plan – a plan that we could implement in order to close Guantanamo. They have never come forward with one and it would have to be approved by Congress,” McCain said this week.

ANYTHING’S ON THE TABLE

The facilities reviewed by the assessment team were the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks and Midwest Joint Regional Corrections Facility at Leavenworth, Kansas; the Consolidated Naval Brig, Charleston, South Carolina; the Federal Correctional Complex, which includes the medium, maximum and supermax facilities in Florence, Colorado; and the Colorado State Penitentiary II in Canon City, Colorado, also known as the Centennial Correctional Facility.

A Colorado senator made it clear this week that he opposes any move to relocate detainees to his state.

“I will not sit idly by while the president uses political promises to imperil the people of Colorado by moving enemy combatants from Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, to my state of Colorado,” Republican Sen. Cory Gardner told a Capitol Hill news conference.

Later, Gardner told The Associated Press that “the pressure that this would put on our judicial system in Colorado is real. The challenges that could be brought through the legal system we’re not prepared for. I think that’s another question on our federal judiciary in Denver. This is a rural area of Colorado. Would they be transported to downtown Denver to the federal courthouse for a hearing?”

Even as the White House pitches this latest plan to skeptical lawmakers, officials have not ruled out the possibility that Obama will try to close the prison and move the remaining prisoners to the U.S. without congressional approval.

“I would not take anything off the table in terms of the president doing everything that he can to achieve this critically important national security objective,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said last week. “And this is a pretty transparent case of the United States Congress putting narrow political interests ahead of national security.”

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