A day after Attorney General Eric Holder revealed his plan to try alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed in federal court, the Chicago Tribune reported another change in the “war on terror” – the White House’s initiative to move some Guantanamo Bay terrorist detainees to a rural Illinois prison. The Justice Dept. and the Dept. of Defense would ship an unknown number of the more than 200 detainees still at the Cuban naval base to Thomson, Illinois, a village of 600 people, 90 miles west of Chicago. And Justice would convert the Thomson Correctional Center, which currently holds 200 minimum-security inmates, to a federal maximum-security prison.
Illinois Democrats were quick to champion the proposal as an economic stimulus for their state. Dick Durbin, the no. 2 Democrat in the U.S. Senate, and Illinois Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn have declared that the prison could create more than 3,000 local jobs. A White House economic report largely echoed Durbin’s assertions. Illinois Republicans, meanwhile, went ballistic. Rep. Mark Kirk, who is running for the U.S. Senate, declared that Illinois would become “ground zero for Jihadist terrorist plots, recruitment and radicalization.”
That al Qaeda could wreak havoc on rural Illinois is likely absurd. But that is not to say moving detainees to Thomson is a silver bullet for the local economy – or for national counterterrorism policy. “The relevant question is not where prisoners are held, but how,” says Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented Guantanamo detainees. “Will we reform our detention policies to comport with universal rights and the rule of law?” (more…)
Topics:
Beltway Outsider,
Dept. of Defense,
Dept. of Justice,
Government in My Backyard (GIMBY)
Tags:
Carroll County,
Dick Durbin,
Federal Bureau of Prisons,
Guantanamo Bay,
Illinois,
job creation,
Mark Kirk,
recession,
terrorist detention,
Thomson Correctional Center,
war on terror