The Associated Press reports that the White House is poised to announce a state prison in Thomson, Illinois, as the location for housing former Guantanamo Bay detainees:
Administration officials as well as Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn will make an official announcement at the White House.
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.
Expect a great deal of hysteria over this decision. Andy McCarthy has already proclaimed that it "will inevitably result in trained terrorists being released in the United States — bank on it."
The American Correctional Association and the Federal Prison Officers' Union, however, have released statements supporting the decision to move Gitmo detainees to the U.S. A conservative legal group, The Constitution Project, supports the transfer of detainees to the Illinois facility.
An anonymous administration official told the Washington Post that the prison's security level would be "beyond supermax." The statement was later clarified to a member of the ACLU, and it was explained that the official meant in terms of perimeter security, not 24-hour isolation for all prisoners.
-- A. Serwer
