So reports the Chicago Tribune’s Katherine Skiba and Peter Nichols: the $626 billion defense spending bill that just passed Congress doesn’t include money to convert the correctional center at Thomson, Illinois to a federal prison. The White House announced a week ago that it wanted to resettle Guantanamo Bay terrorist detainees at Thomson.

But there is a problem besides money: Congress needs to pass a law that says it’s okay to detain people on American soil without giving them a trial. Dissent about holding detainees at Thomson has mostly come from Illinois Republicans that the locked-up detainees will terrorize rural Illinoisans. But the most resonant arguments will come from civil libertarians, appalled by indefinite detention. Obama has made a big deal about closing Guantnamo, but what’s the point if the detainees still can’t get a trial once they are re-settled in the U.S.? Obama will have to make the case to fellow Democrats that spending money on a new site for continued detentions is a necessary evil.

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