Stories

That’s a quote about housing Guantanamo Bay detainees at the Thomson Correctional Center in Illinois, courtesy of a statement from Tom Parker of Amnesty International. Judging from my inbox, the longer civil libertarians look at the Obama administration’s plans for Thomson, the less they like it.

On a conference call just now, senior administration officials provided some details about their plan for detaining Guantanamo detainees at Illinois’ Thomson Correction Center, just across the Mississippi River from Iowa. The facility will be for a “limited number” of detainees, a senior administration official told reporters, for those “who would face trial [in] military [...]

President Barack Obama and key Illinois elected officials will announce Tuesday that roughly 100 detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will soon be housed at a revamped Thomson Correctional Facility just across the Mississippi River from Iowa.
The plan, which was floated as a possibility in late fall, has already drawn criticism from Iowa’s Republican delegation in [...]

As communities in Iowa and Illinois consider the possible transformation of the Thomson, Ill., prison into a federal “supermax” facility, Florence, Colo. journalist Bob Wood’s insights about his own community’s supermax facility shed light on the proposal’s potential impacts.