Illinois Democrats Back Plan to House Guantánamo Prisoners - NYTimes.com

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By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Top Illinois Democrats on Sunday wholeheartedly embraced the idea of sending terrorism suspects from Guantánamo Bay to a maximum-security prison about 150 miles west of Chicago, raising the possibility of a major breakthrough in the Obama administration’s efforts to close the military detention facility in Cuba.

But while Gov. Patrick J. Quinn and Senator Richard J. Durbin endorsed housing the detainees at the Thomson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in a rural area, other local leaders were drumming up opposition to the idea, which could still face considerable opposition in Congress.

For the White House, which confirmed the administration’s interest, it could be the best chance so far to cut through the legal and political knots that have stopped it from closing down the prison camp in Cuba. For supporters in Illinois, it is an attractive economic opportunity. And just as opponents have done elsewhere, some in Illinois cast this plan as an unacceptable risk.

Mr. Quinn and Mr. Durbin, in news conferences to promote the plan, said that turning over the state prison, which is unoccupied, to the federal penal system, and using it for maximum-security inmates including as many as 100 captives from the campaign against terrorism, would create several thousand jobs.

But leading Republicans in the state — including Representatives Donald Manzullo, whose district includes Thomson, and Mark Steven Kirk, who is running for the United States Senate seat once held by Mr. Obama — signed a letter to the president on Sunday strongly opposing any such move.

“As home to America’s tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its No. 1 target,” the letter said, referring to the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly the Sears Tower. “The United States spent more than $50 million to build the Guantánamo Bay detention facility to keep terrorists away from U.S. soil. Al Qaeda terrorists should stay where they cannot endanger American citizens.”

The sharp local debate echoed vehement arguments heard all weekend, after the administration announced that it would try the man accused as the operational leader of the Sept. 11 attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and several co-conspirators, in a federal court in New York, while putting others accused of terrorism before military commissions for an attack on the U.S.S. Cole. That, too, was presented as a step along the path to closing Guantánamo.

News of the possible deal in Illinois was first reported over the weekend by The Chicago Tribune. On Sunday, a White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decision had been made, said that Thomson had emerged as “a leading option” for becoming the new facility the administration needs, and confirmed that government officials would tour the prison site on Monday.

Days after his inauguration, Mr. Obama declared that within a year he would close the Guantánamo prison, a signature component of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policy. In a speech at the National Archives in May, Mr. Obama proposed bringing those detainees deemed too dangerous to release to a facility inside the United States — including some who could not be tried for lack of evidence but were called committed Al Qaeda terrorists and might be held as “combatants.”

Lawmakers of both parties have expressed deep unease all along. Congress enacted a law this year forbidding the administration from bringing Guantánamo detainees into the United States except for the purpose of prosecution. But leading Democratic lawmakers said at the time that they were open to rescinding the restriction once the administration came up with a plan for how to handle the detainees.

As a home-state ally of Mr. Obama, Mr. Quinn provided the kind of enthusiasm no other governor has offered. He called the proposal “good for our state, good for economy and good for our public safety.” By some estimates, it would provide 3,200 jobs and cut the local unemployment rate in half.

But the governor acknowledged the hurdles ahead, saying, “This is not a done deal.” The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, said on the CBS program “Face the Nation” on Sunday that the detainees should not be moved to prisons on United States soil from the base in Cuba, which is also known as Gitmo.

“What problem is the president going to solve by moving these trials to New York or by moving Gitmo prisoners to Michigan, to Illinois, to Colorado?” Mr. Hoekstra said. “Why move them into the United States while we are still under the threat from radical jihadists?”

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, said in three appearances on television talk shows that by treating these prisoners in the civilian system, the administration was mishandling the fight against terrorism.

“It would seem to me what the Obama administration is telling us loud and clear is that both in substance and reality, the war on terror, from their point of view, is over,” Mr. Giuliani said on Fox News Sunday. “We’re no longer going to treat these people as if this was an act of war.”

For months, an interagency administration task force has been examining ways to handle the Guantánamo population, including looking at state and federal prisons around the country that might be used. Thomson, a maximum-security state prison that was built in 2001 at a cost to Illinois taxpayers of about $120 million, only to sit almost unused, is one of them.

Its chances got a lift last month when the president of the Village of Thomson, Jerry Hebeler, contacted Mr. Quinn’s office to suggest a federal takeover of the prison, according to a letter Mr. Quinn sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. last week. Mr. Quinn agreed and personally raised the issue in a meeting with Mr. Obama two weeks ago.

The Thomson prison is contained by a 146-acre reservation near the Mississippi River and has eight 200-cell compartments designed for strict control of inmates. It is surrounded by an electrified fence capable of carrying 7,000 volts, has 312 surveillance cameras with motion detection capability, and armed inner and outer perimeter towers.

If a decision is made to proceed, the official said, the Federal Bureau of Prisons would buy the prison from Illinois and convert it into a maximum-security federal penitentiary. The bureau would house ordinary federal inmates in part of the facility and lease another part to the Defense Department to hold former Guantánamo detainees. The two populations would not have contact, the official said.

The federal government would also retrofit the facility to take it beyond the security specifications of the federal “Supermax” facility in Florence, Colo., from which no prisoner has ever escaped, including by adding extra external perimeter fencing, the official said. It would be operated with the most restrictive security conditions, “including individual confinement and isolation capabilities,” the official said.

Susan Saulny contributed reporting.