Illinois Prison to Get Gitmo Detainees

Bill Smith, Editor: Remember when the Senate voted to limit the use of all federal funds to move GITMO prisoners to the U.S. Looks like the Senators blinked and the American public be damned, the Muslim terrorists are coming to Thomson, Illinois.

The Washington Post is reporting online that "the White House plans to announce Tuesday that the government will acquire an underutilized state prison in rural Illinois to be the new home for a limited number of terrorist suspects held at Guantanamo. . . . Officials from both the White House and Durbin's office confirmed that President Barack Obama had directed the government to acquire Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Ill., a sleepy town near the Mississippi River about 150 miles from Chicago. A Durbin spokesman said the facility would house federal inmates and no more than 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

. . . The Thomson Correctional Center was one of several potential sites evaluated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons to potentially house detainees from the Navy-run prison at Guantanamo Bay. Others included prisons in Marion, Ill., Hardin, Mont., and Florence, Colo., where officials also have said they would welcome the jobs that would be created by the new inmates. . . .The Thomson Correctional Center was built by Illinois in 2001 as a state prison with the potential to house maximum security inmates. Local officials hoped it would improve the local economy, providing jobs to a hard-hit community. State budget problems, however, have kept the 1,600-cell prison from ever fully opening. At present, it houses about 200 minimum-security inmates."

I guess Illinois built the State prison believing "if you build it they will come." It hasn't worked out. Now some political influence by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin and former Illinois senator now President Barack Obama is helping Illinois out by buying (with our tax dollars) the Illinois financial lemon and adding it to the Federal prison system to house GITMO Muslim terrorists.

I grew up 11 miles north of the village of Thomson, Illinois in Savanna, Illinois - the only city in the county with a stop light. My grandfather was famous during that time for his hunting of rattle snakes and my grandmother gained notoriety for living to be 107. We used to go to Thomson in the the flat rich (often flooded) delta farm land to either buy watermelons or to go duck hunting in the federal reserve along the Mississippi River. Thomson was almost nonexistent back then and according to the the last reported census the village has only 559 people. Most people live in Savanna a former booming railroad center for two major train companies and having one of the major railroad bridges crossing the Mississippi River. The city has declined since the removal of the railway yards. At the last official count, the entire county had only 16,674 people down 3,000 people since the 1060s. Savanna has been trying to maintain itself as a tourist attraction with the Palisades State Park to the north of the city.

I can only wonder how the new federal prison change will affect Savanna. Maybe in the future they will have a mosque to support the families of the prisoners who migrate to the area to be nearer to the incarcerated prisoners.

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Tags: Barack Obama, Dick Durbin, domestic terrorists, GITMO, Illinois, military prison, Savanna, Thomson, IL, Bill Smith To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!