HR0762 96TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0762 LRB096 15776 RLC 31016 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Governor Pat Quinn has proposed to convey the Thomson Correctional Center to the United States federal government for use as a prison and detention facility for persons subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006; and

WHEREAS, Persons subject to the Military Commissions Act include persons accused of complicity in some of the gravest war crimes ever committed by members of the human race; and

WHEREAS, The Thomson Correctional Center was designed and built as a 1,600-bed conventional maximum-security prison facility, with the security perimeter of a conventional prison, and is well-suited for this purpose; and

WHEREAS, Nothing in this Resolution should be taken as opposition to using the Thomson Correctional Center as a conventional 1,600-bed maximum-security prison; we recognize that this would create much-needed jobs for the Thomson area, including employment for a significant number of workers in northwestern Illinois; and

WHEREAS, Nothing in this Resolution should be taken as opposition to the sale, at a fair price, of the Thomson Correctional Center, to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, for use as a conventional 1,600-bed prison facility, the purpose for which it was designed; and

WHEREAS, The Quinn proposal contemplates using Thomson, not as a conventional 1,600-bed maximum-security prison, but as a federal detention facility for approximately 200 persons subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which covers unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States; and

WHEREAS, Unlawful enemy combatants subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 are currently housed at Camp Delta, Camp V, and Camp Echo at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, where they are guarded by United States armed forces; and

WHEREAS, If unlawful enemy combatants against the United States, subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, are kept in detention, they ought to be kept in a purpose-built facility that has been constructed for the specialized duty of keeping them in confinement under extraordinary conditions of high security, including: (a) the maintenance of a suitable security perimeter around the facility, and (b) specially trained and specialized security guards, who should either be members of the U.S. armed forces or be persons who have undergone training equivalent to members of the U.S. armed forces; and

WHEREAS, While the current headcount of persons who will be treated indefinitely as detainees subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006 is not public information, a current press account published in the "New York Times" on May 21, 2009 indicates that the headcount of detainees currently at Guantanamo Bay is approximately 200; and of that number somewhat more than 100 are scheduled, under the current policy of the administration of President Barack Obama, to be moved to the United States; and of that number 50 to 100 are likely to be classified as being too dangerous to ever release; and

WHEREAS, This group of 200 Guantanamo Bay detainees, classified as unlawful enemy combatants subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, is the core group of people at the heart of this debate over the future of the Thomson Correctional Center; other unlawful enemy combatants may be captured and detained in the future, but this is the headcount of people who are the subject of this debate right now; and

WHEREAS, Even assuming that the Thomson Correctional Center were to be adaptively re-used as a federal detention center for up to 200 detainees, it will likely house far fewer prisoners, and create fewer jobs, than if it is put into use as the 1,600-bed conventional maximum-security prison that it was designed to be; and

WHEREAS, There is ongoing concern that the persons detained in Guantanamo have allies around the world who may respond to these detentions with an ongoing threat of homicidal violence that will stretch indefinitely into the future; and

WHEREAS, The federal administrative decision to close the current detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, and transfer these detainees to the populated territory of the United States, and the proposal that they be detained in Illinois, does not take account of this ongoing and indefinite threat to the people of the United States, or the people of Illinois; and

WHEREAS, Exercising its oversight responsibilities, the United States Senate, on May 19, 2009, by a bipartisan vote of 90-6, stripped language from the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 that would have appropriated $80 million to implement the closure of the detention camps at Guantanamo, thereby expressing the sense of a consensus majority of the Senate that this threat should not be imposed upon the peaceful, law-abiding people of the United States; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that the 1,600-bed Thomson Correctional Center, located in a thickly-populated rural section of northwest Illinois near the Mississippi River, is not a suitable facility, nor does it have a suitable security perimeter, nor is it placed in a suitable location, for the indefinite detention of up to 200 unlawful enemy combatants who are subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006; and be it further

RESOLVED, That Governor Patrick Quinn and his administration should immediately halt all negotiations or contacts with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and all other relevant federal offices and departments, relating to the proposed transfer of the Thomson Correctional Center to the federal government for purposes of a Military Commissions Act of 2006 detention facility, until they initiate consultations with the Illinois General Assembly and receive its consent to undertake this move; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the Quinn administration to redouble its efforts to find a use for the Thomson Correctional Center as the 1,600-bed maximum-security conventional correctional facility, the functional use for which it was designed; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we urge the administration of President Barack Obama, in the strongest terms, to reconsider its decision to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on the grounds that this location, within the island of Cuba, guarded by the armed forces of the United States, is by far the best and safest location for the indefinite detention of unlawful enemy combatants subject to the Military Commissions Act of 2006; and be it further

RESOLVED, That we commend the United States Senate for its defense of the people of the United States, and urge the Congress to maintain its position in favor of the continued operation of Guantanamo Bay and against the transfer of unlawful enemy combatants to the territory of the United States; and be it further

RESOLVED, That suitable copies of this Resolution be transmitted to the President of the United States, to the two United States Senators from Illinois, to the nineteen members of the United States House of Representatives from Illinois, and to the Governor of Illinois.