Lawmakers Discuss Plan For Gitmo Inmates

Detainees sit together inside the Camp 6 detention facility at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba.
Detainees inside the Camp 6 detention facility at Guantánamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba
Reuters / Corbis
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(CHICAGO) — Gov. Pat Quinn says selling a prison in rural northwest Illinois to the federal government is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create jobs in the struggling area. (See pictures inside Guantanamo.)

But plans to sell the prison that would then be used to house some detainees from the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba is creating controversy because of safety concerns.

Federal officials are expected at Thomson Correctional Center on Monday to inspect the prison.

Quinn says Illinois is being considered along with at least two other cities in Colorado and Montana.

President Barack Obama wants alleged terrorism suspects from the military-run center to be transferred to U.S. soil so they can be prosecuted. The plan to use the Thomson facility, about 150 miles west of Chicago, was first reported by the Chicago Tribune.

See portraits of Gitmo detainees.

Read "Military Tribunals Make Closing Gitmo a Tough Goal"

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VICKI ESCARRA, head of food-bank network Feeding America, which is logging record donations amid the recession; an estimated 1 in 6 Americans went without enough food at some point in 2008