Plan to bring Gitmo detainees to Illinois in action

President Barack Obama is set to move forward today with plans to buy a maximum-security prison in western Illinois to house detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin will meet with administration officials on Capitol Hill this afternoon to be briefed on the final proposal, which would likely still have to pass muster with Congress and apparently at least a panel of Illinois lawmakers.

Obama, Quinn and Durbin are moving forward with the proposal, first unveiled in mid-November, despite staunch opposition from Republicans in Illinois and across the nation.

Using the state-of-the-art Thomson Correctional Center on the state's western edge is now a critical component of Obama's overall plan to close Gitmo, a sensitive process the Chicago Democrat has previously said would be completed by the end of January, but is likely to take longer.

An Obama administration official confirmed to the Daily Herald late Monday a plan to begin the acquisition of Thomson would be announced sometime today. The administration had previously said it was considering Thomson, but hadn't finally settled on the near-vacant prison just yet.

When first announced, the idea of moving about 100 al-Qaida detainees to Thomson was sharply rebuked by the state's GOP congressional delegation and Republican leaders at the state level. A panel of lawmakers is expected to consider closing the current prison, now holding a couple hundred state inmates, at Thomson on Dec. 22 as part of the expected sale process.

The Obama administration has previously said the plan would require Congressional approval as part of an overall package to close Gitmo.

Democrats in Illinois have attempted to focus the debate on the jobs such a move would create in rural Thomson off the Mississippi River. If the federal government moved thousands of regular inmates to the prison, as was originally proposed, along with the Gitmo detainees, thousands of jobs could be created.

Local lawmakers have supported the plan as well as the mayor of Thomson.

Meanwhile, Illinois Republicans have warned the move would make the Chicago area more of a target for terrorists, a contention hotly disputed by supporters of the plan who point out the state already holds about 35 inmates with terrorist ties in prisons.

Gitmo: Congress must approve plan

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