Debate over Gitmo Prisoner Transfer turns Political in Illinois

By: Stephanie Condon
Topics: National Security

(CBS/AP)

Lawmakers in the state of Illinois are debating the economic and safety issues surrounding a potential transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to a maximum security prison about 150 miles west of Chicago. In the process, they have also managed to turn the discussion into a partisan debate.

Democrats in Illinois, including Gov. Pat Quinn and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, are in support of a plan the White House is considering to move Guantanamo detainees to the Thomson State Correctional facility in Northwest Illinois. On Wednesday, Durbin will hold a closed-door briefing on the issue with the state's entire congressional delegation, according to the Hill newspaper. Pentagon and Justice Department officials will be in attendance at the meeting, along with Illinois state officials, the Hill reports.

Federal officials and state lawmakers toured the nearly empty facility in November. Thomson has 1,600 cells, but it currently only holds about 200 minimum-security inmates because budget problems kept it from fully opening. Bringing the Guantanamo detainees to the prison could bring nearly 3,000 jobs to the area, according to a White House analysis. The county's unemployment rate, which was at 10.5 percent in September, could be cut by 2 to 4 percentage points by the transfer, according to the analysis.

"There are too many people out of work, there are businesses closing down because people are out of work," Durbin said reportedly said in November, explaining his support for the plan. "They need pay checks."

Nevertheless, Republican representatives from Illinois maintain the move would be a bad idea. GOP Illinois Reps. Mark Kirk, Aaron Schock, Pete Roskam, Tim Johnson, Mark Kirk, John Shimkus, Judy Biggert and Don Manzullo have introduced legislation to ban funding for the transfer of Guantanamo detainees to the U.S., the Hill notes.

State legislators are also in dispute over how to handle the issue. Republicans from the Illinois General Assembly on Friday called for a special bipartisan committee to study the potential sale of Thomson to the federal government, the Chicago Tribune reports. House Republican Leader Tom Cross called it one of the most "salient issues" in the state today.

A state legislative panel will have to review the closing of the prison before it could be sold to the federal government, but Democratic State Sen. Jeff Schoenberg, who co-chairs that panel, wants to fast-track that process, according to the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, political candidates in upcoming Illinois elections are adding their two cents to the debate. Gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna, the former Illinois Republican party chair, said Monday that moving Guantanamo inmates to Thomson is an "extreme plan" to "put terrorists in our neighborhood," the Quad-City Times reports. McKenna is one of a half dozen Republicans who have jumped into Illinois' 2010 gubernatorial election.

Chicago writer Dennis Byrne wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed today that opposing the transfer of prisoners to Thomson could ultimately work against Republicans.

"Republicans are handing Democrats a ready-made issue, making the GOP look like they oppose job creation in a community that badly needs help," Byrne wrote. "Isn't a better issue for Republicans the fact that a $145 million maximum-security prison with 1,600 cells is home to only 144 inmates? That's all the state can afford thanks to years of financial mismanagement. Most of the blame falls on Democrats."

Stephanie Condon
Stephanie Condon is a political reporter for CBSNews.com.
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by James_French December 2, 2009 3:19 PM EST: In September of 2004 Muslim terrorists killed over 250 school children in the rural village of Beslan after holding over 1,000 school children hostage for two days. According to the Washington Post, "Hundreds of children, their parents and teachers died in the bloody culmination of a 52-hour siege that began when heavily armed Muslim guerrillas stormed their school Wednesday and ended in an hours-long battle with Russian troops Friday." [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58381-2004Sep3.html]
We can be certain that the same thing will happen here if some 200 Gunatanamo terrorists are housed in the Thomson prison, for surely there will be a hostage taking event led by some of their allies who are intent upon freeing so large a target of their comrades, in so soft and vulerable an area as the place where I live, not far from Thomson.
The insane idea of this administration, in pure violation of their constitutional oath to "insure domestic tranquility" is already making us a part of the easy plans to turn rural Illinois into the front lines of the war on terror.
We are full of explosive potential. Fuels, gasoline storage areas, poisonous fertlizer tanks, readily available weapons by the hundreds, and unguarded school children are all around us. We would be foolish to forget that these are enemy combatants, sworn to kill us all. A small group of men could easily crash their way into Thomson, bringing with them weapons for all the terrorists, and turn them into an armed battalion of dedicated suicidal fighters, intent on ravaging an entire part of Illinois and Iowa. How much would they enjoy, we should ask, wrecking as much destruction and human misery as possible? After all, that is what they were living for when we captured them.
I want to say it again, in the strongest possible terms. Concentrating Guantanamo terrorists by the dozens in a rural Illinois jail is a sure step to a human disaster of horrific proportions.
The idea of putting terrorists into our stomach, is being promoted by people who can speak little if any Arabic, who have never lived in the Middle East, who pay no respect to the seriousness of "holy war," who have no record of military command, and, most of all; who don't love our wives, our children, our way of life and the people of northwestern Illinois as much as we do.; Reply to this comment