McHenry County Blog

16th District Congressman Don Manzullo received an encouraging letter yesterday, March 18th.

Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich wrote,

“With respect to your suggestion to move forward whether (or not) detainees from Guantanamo are moved there, the President has directed the Department of Justice to acquire the facility to fulfill both the goals of reducing federal prison overcrowding and transferring a limited number of detainees out of Guantanamo.”

So, Illinois will have two really secure Federal prisons. One at Marion in Southern Illinois and one at Thomson in Northwestern Illinois.

And the goal of Governor George Ryan to provide jobs to his constituents up there will be fulfilled…if eight years after it could have been, had Democratic Party successor Rod Blagojevich been alert enough to rent out the space for imported prisoners from other states.

Below is the text of the letter Manzullo received:

This responds to your letter to the President, dated November 30,2009, expressing strong support for establishing a federal prison at the Thomson, Illinois Correctional Center. We agree with your assessment that the facility “is ideally suited to help the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons meet their growing demands for more prison capacity.”

Thomson Correctional Center where Barack Obama originally wanted to incarcerate Gitmo terrorists, some of whom trained in Yemen, as did the Detroit Christmas bomber

As you stated in your letter, Harley Lappin, Director of the Bureau of Prisons, has briefed you and other Members of the Illinois congressional delegation numerous times about the critical overcrowding problem in the federal prison system, including a particularly urgent need for “supermax” type bedspace. Director Lappin has also been working closely with local and state officials on the process of obtaining appraisals and meeting other federal and state requirements for the sale.

With respect to your suggestion to move forward on the acquisition regardless of whether detainees from Guantanamo are moved there, the President has directed the Department of Justice to acquire the facility to fulfill both the goals of reducing federal prison overcrowding and transferring a limited number of detainees out of Guantanamo. The Department has made clear, however, that it would be seeking to purchase the facility in Thomson even if detainees were not being considered for transfer there. (Emphasis added.)

As you may know, the Department of Justice requested $237 million in its Fiscal Year 2011 budget to acquire, activate, and operate the facility in Thomson. We appreciate your support for this request and look forward to working with you as this process moves forward.

In his December 15th statement about imprisoning terrorists in Northwestern Illinois’ Thomson Correctional Center, 16th District Congressman Don Manzullo warned that

“the vitriol now pointed toward Gitmo will transfer to the village of Thomson and this facility, creating a new magnet for terrorists’ activity and contributing to their recruiting rhetoric.”

With the attempted destruction of the plane landing at Detroit from Nigeria with a Yemenis-supplied bomb, maybe it’s time to revisit Manzullo’s concerns. Especially since about 40% of its inmates may be from Yemen.

Those of us who have driven south of Rockford down Interstate 39 know there are two cooling towers for Commonwealth Edison’s nuclear power plant at Byron within sight of the highway.

While I’m sure Exelon would say the facility is safe from terrorist threats, for a moment, think of how the wind blows into McHenry County from the southwest.

McHenry County is about as far away from the nuclear power plants as is Thomson, Illinois.

If anything bad happened to Bryon’s nuclear power plants, it would not take a genius to connect the event with terrorists incarcerated at Thomson.

Against a backdrop of the Nigeria airline bomber flying into Detroit may have been fitted with his explosive device by residents of Yemen, NBC’s WMAQ-TV observes that about 40% of the prisoners scheduled to be transferred to Northwest Illinois are from Yemen.

It then quotes Massachusetts Democratic Party Congressman Bennie Thompson, who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee thusly:

“It’s something that’s going to be of interest to everybody. We ought to look at everything we have underway to make sure that something hasn’t been overlooked.”