Some Gitmo Detainees Headed to Illinois Prison, Obama Administration to Announce Tues

[darrels joy]

Some Gitmo Detainees Headed to Illinois Prison, Obama Administration to Announce Tuesday

December 14, 2009 11:02 PM

A prison complex 150 miles from Chicago will house Gitmo detainees, the Obama administration will announce Tuesday.

A senior administration official tells ABC News that on Tuesday the administration will announce that President Obama "has directed that the federal government proceed with the acquisition of the Thomson Correctional Center in Thomson, Illinois to house federal inmates and a limited number of detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba."

Thomson Correctional Center is a maximum security prison that opened in 2001 but has never been fully utilized because of state budget issues.

Information from the state of Illinois indicates that Thomson Correctional Center is a Level 1 adult male maximum-security facility comprised of 1,600 cells and eight housing units, none of which are currently used. The facility is on 146 acres and is currently surrounded by a 12-foot exterior fence and 15-foot interior fence -- which includes a dual sided electric stun fence. The cell houses were constructed with pre-cast, reinforced cement walls. The complex also contains a 200-bed minimum-security unit, which has been operational.

"Closing the detention center at Guantanamo is essential to protecting our national security and helping our troops by removing a deadly recruiting tool from the hands of al Qaeda," the official said. "Tomorrow’s announcement is an important step forward as we work to achieve our national security objectives."

Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Dick Durbin, two leading officials -- both Democrats -- who have supported the move, will be briefed on the decision Tuesday by administration officials.

We first reported on Thomson being a possible locale for Gitmo detainees on November 14.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...e-tuesday.html

[revwardoc]

"Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Sen. Dick Durbin, two leading officials -- both Democrats -- who have supported the move, will be briefed on the decision Tuesday by administration officials."

Of course they'll go along with it. Illinois is going to rake in a whole bunch of federal $ for this.

[darrels joy]

Exclusive interview with Rep. Peter Hoekstra on Gitmo detainees coming to Illinois: ‘I know why we haven’t sent them back anywhere else in the world’

December 14th, 2009


Dan Calabrese


Talk to Congressman Peter Hoekstra (R-Michigan), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, and you can sense how much it’s killing him not to be able to tell you what he knows.

If we knew what he knows . . .


Specifically, Hoekstra is privy to classified intelligence about the Guantanamo Bay detainees who are headed for Thomson Correction Facility just outside Thomson, Illinois. These are the people the Obama Administration assures us pose no danger to the American people because they are going to be in maximum-security facilities.

That argument may sound convincing on the surface, but Hoekstra warns that the people who are buying into it – including the local community officials and even the Illinois congressional delegation – don’t know everything they need to know.

“The public doesn’t really know who these people are,” Hoekstra said in a Monday afternoon interview with The North Star National. “They don’t know what they’ve done. I’ve seen the profiles of many of these people. I know who they are. I know what they’ve done and I know why we haven’t sent them back anywhere else in the world.”

Because the information he has is classified, Hoekstra is not able to go into much detail about what these 200-some detainees have been doing at Guantanamo Bay. But one thing he makes clear is that their efforts to kill Americans did not stop when they arrived at Gitmo, and that’s going to present challenges you don’t face with your typical prisoner – even with a serial killer.

“I can’t give you the profile of someone who is on murderers row and is serving a life sentence versus a jihadist, and how you might hold them differently,” Hoekstra said. “But talking with experts, they said it’s two very, very different problems. In 99 percent of the cases, these radical jihadists will behave differently. They’re still invested in killing Americans.

It’s not like they’ve been arrested and convicted and given a life sentence for a fit of rage where they killed their neighbor. These people are still committed to destroying the American system and killing Americans.”

And they just might get a first-hand opportunity to do that in Thomson.

While their actual guards will almost certainly be U.S. military personnel, the Obama Administration has promised that the federal government would bring – and pay for – as many as 3,800 new jobs to the community as part of the agreement for Thomson to host the Gitmo detainees. What kinds of jobs will those be?

“They may hire locals to work in the kitchen, do laundry and those types of things,” Hoekstra said.

Thomson residents, are you sure you want those jobs? Consider: The vast majority of Gitmo detainees have already been released or sent back to other countries. Why not these guys? Because, as Hoekstra – who has read their profiles – explains, they are “the worst of the worst.”

“To get to Gitmo, you had to go through all kinds of steps,” Hoekstra said.
“You had to be picked up on the battlefield or in a threatening situation.

Then the decision had to be made that we were going to take you out of the country and maybe send you to a different detention facility. For a lot of the people in Iraq or Afghanistan, they were put in facilities in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they stayed there or were maybe released. But a lot of these guys were selected for this special treatment.”

That could be because they were in possession of a particular kind of intelligence. Or it could be because they posed a particular kind of threat.

Even so, of the more than 500 people who have been sent to Gitmo at one time or another, more than 300 have already been sent elsewhere.

Those remaining are the 200 most problematic detainees.

And they’re the ones who are coming to Illinois.

Of course, many critics of Gitmo and of Bush Administration anti-terror policies claim there is no certainty that these guys are really terrorists at all. They claim that the U.S. simply rounded people up without really being sure who they were, sometimes on the word of local bounty hunters who were getting paid to deliver heads to them.

Hoekstra, having seen their files, says that’s nonsense.

“The people who are left there have been screened and screened pretty well,” Hoekstra said. “Does that mean it’s impossible to have made a mistake? No. There could have been a mistake with some of these people.

But I’m very confident that there weren’t.”

It is a frustrating exercise for Hoekstra to try to sound this warning, because it’s obvious the most convincing information he has is the very information he can’t share. He will make an effort on Tuesday to convince the Intelligence Committee that they should clue in the Illinois congressional delegation about the kinds of people who will soon be their guests.

I asked him to speculate about the reaction of the Illinois congressional delegation if they knew what Hoekstra knows.

“I believe that it would give pause to the people in the Illinois delegation,” Hoekstra said. “But I think it would give even more pause to the people of Illinois if they knew who these people are, if they know what our experience was with them at Gitmo. They’d be very reluctant.”

But Hoekstra isn’t allowed to say what he knows. And the Obama Administration, which knows everything Hoekstra knows, apparently doesn’t care.

http://www.northstarnational.com/200...inois-i-world/

[darrels joy]

A Durbin aide said the facility would house federal inmates and no more than 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091215/...etainee_prison

So where will the "200-some detainees" be going?

Joy

[darrels joy]

Republican leader: Don't bet on Gitmo transfers

By Susan Cornwell Susan Cornwell 02-0800>Thu Dec 17, 7:34 pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Congress will probably be able to stop the Obama administration from bringing Guantanamo Bay detainees to U.S. soil, the Republican leader in the U.S. House of Representatives said on Thursday.

Representative John Boehner said at least at least two pieces of legislation would have to go through Congress before the U.S. government can move any of the detainees to an Illinois prison -- and he doubted either bill would pass.

"I wouldn't want to bet on when those two pieces of legislation will pass, if ever," Boehner told reporters.

The Democrats have a majority in both houses of Congress, but lawmakers in both parties are nervous about President Barack Obama's pledge to close the prison camp at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that houses foreign terrorism suspects.

This week the administration said it planned to buy an Illinois prison and move some Guantanamo detainees there.

But current U.S. law bars Guantanamo detainees from being brought onto U.S. soil unless they are going to be prosecuted. Boehner suggested that provision would need to be changed.

The Ohio Republican said the administration would also need to get congressional approval to fund the prison project.

The White House, responding to Boehner's comments, said President Obama would work with Congress to close Guantanamo.

"Our military leaders -- many who also served under the previous administration -- have said that closing Guantanamo will help our troops in the fight against al Qaeda," said White House spokeswoman Amy Brundage.

"President Obama will work closely with Congress until we have closed Guantanamo and removed the deadly recruiting tool for al Qaeda that it has come to be," she said.

Boehner warned the White House not to try to force Congress to approve Guantanamo transfers by attaching them to legislation supplying funding for the war in Afghanistan.

If that happened, he wouldn't vote for the war funding, something he said he would otherwise support.

"I am not going to support a bill that facilitates bringing Gitmo prisoners to the United States," Boehner said, adding that he thought his caucus was united on the issue.

With serious unrest among Obama's Democrats over the controversial war, the president likely needs the votes of Boehner and other Republicans to approve additional funding for his recent decision to 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

The next round of war funding legislation is not likely to be considered before the spring.

Guantanamo was opened in 2002 and the United States holds 210 prisoners there. Attorney General Eric Holder said this week that buying Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois would help close the facility in Cuba, perhaps by summer.

(Editing by Anthony Boadle and Eric Walsh)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091218/...anamo_congress

[darrels joy]

GITMO North Is the Worst Option on the Table

by Bobby Schillin

On Monday, Politico reported that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham was in negotiations with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on a plan to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and transfer the terrorist detainees to a prison in Thomson, Illinois. With all due respect to the Senator, there are some particular details about Illinois facility he should know.

On January 6, 2010, three prisoners escaped from the Tri-County Detention Center in Ullin, IL. Local schools were immediately closed and communities were put on alert, as the federal prisoners were considered “armed and dangerous.” It seems these three prisoners are still free and on the run.

Yet, just two months prior, Illinois liberals in Congress were pushing to move Guantanamo Bay detainees to a prison in Thomson, Illinois. With three inmates escaping from a federal prison in the same state, one would think that it would make the Thomson prison deal radioactive.

If this issue isn’t radioactive now, it should be.

Press reports about the Thomson facility note repeatedly that it is in “rural” Illinois. What they don’t mention is the Thomson prison is just 25 miles away from a nuclear power plant. Worse, the prison is only 50 miles away from one of the largest military arsenals in the United States.

I could think of a few better places to put Al-Qaeda terrorists.


I know that politicians like to jump into things without thinking about it first, especially when federal dollars are involved, but we as citizens should have a few questions answered before they decide to put terrorists within 25 miles of a nuclear plant.

First, Guantanamo Bay is almost impossible to get to. If one were to actually break out of the facility, there is just about nowhere to go. Still, we should know if there have been prison-break attempts. Have allies of the terrorists tried to organize a strike against the facility? Why does it make sense to move terrorists to the middle of America, where there is easy access and open country to flee into?

Second, Kansas and Michigan chose to turn the same deal down. What was their reasoning for their rejection of Gitmo North? What information were they given that made them turn down the claimed 3,000 high-paying jobs? After all, isn’t Michigan’s economy much worse than that of Illinois?

Third, why is Illinois selling the prison to the feds at a fraction of the cost of its worth? Especially during a time when Gov. Quinn is releasing prisoners due to overcrowding. Aren’t we going to have to build another prison to fix the overcrowding problem? How much will that cost?
Furthermore, the politicians have coated this proposal in honey, by promising 3,000 high paid jobs. Providing 3,000 jobs is going to cost a lot of money. The median pay for a federal prison guard is around $30,000 a year. That means that this plan is going to cost taxpayers over $90 million a year to house terrorists on our own soil.

Even more, according to a public memo released from Congressman Don Manzullo’s office, the 3,000 jobs will not be given out to locals or people in the surrounding area. In fact, it is estimated that 1,500 of these jobs will be filled by the U.S. Army. The politicians are also not telling the public about the special requirements needed to be a federal prison guard.

Instead they act like these jobs are going to be handed out like candy at the Fourth of July parade.

Last, how will transferring prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Illinois, make our country safer? Is a name and location change going to make our enemies hate us less? Even if Guantanamo Bay is erased from history, Al-Qaeda terrorists will still be busy recruiting more and more terrorists to attack America.

In a recent statement, Rep. Phil Hare, my opponent in November, smeared me for choosing “fear mongering” over a promised 3,000 jobs. Am I fear mongering? I guess you could call it that. I fear putting a terrorist prison next to a nuclear power plant and a massive military arsenal. I fear surrendering one of our state prisons to the feds could result in more criminals being turned loose because of overcrowding in other facilities.

And, I fear for my ten children and wonder what kind of America they will inherit from my generation.

It is sad to note that some politicians are more concerned with making a headline about bringing jobs, rather than our own security.

Bottom line: even if the promised 3,000 jobs actually materialized, it is not worth the thousands of lives we are putting at risk by bringing Al Queda terrorists onto our turf.

Again, Sen. Graham, please stop trying to negotiate away our security in Illinois. In return, when I’m elected to Congress in November, I promise to not try to move terrorists to Charleston.

http://biggovernment.com/bschilling/...le/#more-83726

[revwardoc]

I think we should send them to Sherrif Joe Arpaio in Arizona. He'd know just how to treat them.

Joe_Arpaio

[1CAVCCO15MED]

Any prison in Texas.

[darrels joy]

Gov. Quinn affirmed today that, given the mood of Congress, the planned transfer of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to Thomson Correctional Center is probably "not going to happen".

Quinn's comments follow on reports that the House Armed Services Committee has unanimously approved legislation that would prohibit creating a detention center inside the United States.

Quinn, speaking to reporters after signing an adoption records bill in Chicago Friday, said that "it's less likely" that Gitmo detainees are coming to Thomson, but argued nevertheless that "separate and distinct there's a need for a federal prison."

Thomson, he said, will likely still be sold to the feds.


"They've studied it six ways to Sunday ... they're prepared to move quickly," Quinn said.

President Obama made closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay one of his goals for the first year of his presidency and set a deadline that passed two months ago.

The president instructed the federal government to purchase the prison at Thomson, but several lawmakers, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, have vowed to block the funds for its purchase.

The idea to buy Thomson, a largely unused Supermax prison in upstate Illinois, was first floated in December.



Source: http://www.nbcchicago.com/blogs/ward-room/Gitmo-Transfer-to-Thompson-Not-Going-to-Happen-Says-Quinn-94596849.html#ixzz0obGr2qf3