Illinois prison eyed to house Guantanamo detainees

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Obama administration officials will visit a virtually empty Illinois prison this week as a possible location to house foreign terrorism suspects held at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay prison that President Barack Obama has vowed to shut by January, the state's governor's office said on Sunday.

"They are weighing their options and Illinois is among them," said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, a Democrat.

The plan being considered for the Thomson Correctional Center calls for the Federal Bureau of Prisons to operate it as a maximum-security prison for federal inmates and lease a portion to the Defense Department to house fewer than 100 Guantanamo detainees, Illinois Senator Dick Durbin said.

The Thomson Correctional Center, located about 150 miles (240 miles) west of Chicago, was built by Illinois in 2001 and has 1,600 cells. It currently houses only about 200 minimum-security prisoners.

Durbin said preliminary estimates show more than 3,000 jobs would be created, potentially injecting more than $1 billion into the local economy over the first four years of operation.

"This is an opportunity to dramatically reduce unemployment, create thousands of good-paying jobs and breathe new economic life into this part of downstate Illinois," Durbin, the U.S. Senate's second-ranking Democrat, said in a statement.

Administration officials have been searching for a facility to hold foreign terrorism suspects currently detained at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which opened in 2002.

Officials also considered as possible sites Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and a facility in Standish, Michigan.

Reed said Obama administration officials were due to visit the Thomson facility this week. Quinn called it a "virtually vacant, state-of-the-art facility."