Illinois officials say holding Gitmo inmates would be economic boost
The Obama administration is considering the Thomson Correctional Center on Monday, located 150 miles west of Chicago, as home for some detainees from Guantanamo Bay; Illinois officials say the move could provide up to 2,000 jobs and up to $1 billion in federal money to the area
A proposal to house federal prisoners, including some detainees from Guantanamo Bay, in a largely vacant maximum-security prison would be an economic boost to struggling northern Illinois, state officials said Sunday. “This is something that is very good for our state, it’s good for our economy, it’s good for public safety,” Illinois governor Pat Quinn told reporters.
CNN reports that Officials from the departments of Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, and the federal Bureau of prisons will visit the Thomson Correctional Center on Monday. Quinn’s office on Saturday said the officials would see whether the “virtually vacant, state-of-the-art facility” in Thomson, about 150 miles west of Chicago, could be of use to the Bureau of Prisons.
If it is, the governor and other officials said Sunday, it could provide up to 2,000 jobs and up to $1 billion in federal money to the area.
Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, said he believes the proposal provides a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” for his state’s residents. “There are other states that want to take these jobs,” Senator Durbin said. “We’ve got to win this competition.”
Under the proposal, he said, federal officials have said fewer than 100 detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba would be housed in the 1,600-bed facility. They would be in a wing under the control of the Department of Defense, while the Bureau of Prisons would assume responsibility for the rest of the facility.
The United States is asking other countries to house some of the Guantanamo detainees when the prison is closed, said Durbin, the Senate majority whip. These countries are asking why America is not housing some of the inmates itself, he said, and use of the Thomson facility would demonstrate to them that the United States is willing to shoulder some of the responsibility.
CNN reports that an Obama administration official said Saturday that as part of the conversion at Thomson, the Bureau of Prisons and Defense Department would enhance security to exceed those of the nation’s only supermax prison — the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Florence, Colorado. No person has ever escaped from the prison.
The Thomson proposal, first reported Saturday by the Chicago Tribune, triggered immediate concern from critics. U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Illinois), whose district covers suburban Chicago, circulated a letter addressed to President Obama to Illinois leaders Saturday, opposing the possible transfer of detainees and saying that housing them in Thomson would turn metropolitan Chicago into “ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization.”
As home to Chicago’s Willis (formerly Sears) Tower — the nation’s tallest building — “we should not invite al Qaeda to make Illinois its number one target,” says Kirk, who is running for the same Senate seat once held by Obama.
Durbin on Sunday pointed to the federal maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois, which he said already houses thirty-five people convicted of terrorism, along with members of Colombian drug gangs and Mexican drug cartels — “some of the most dangerous people in America.”