Detainees bring hope — not danger — to struggling Illinois town

THOMSON, Ill. — This town has waited eight years for its prison to open.

Families have come and gone. Shops have expanded, and closed. Roads have been widened, hotels built. And yet the traffic never arrived, the rooms were seldom rented.

Now, most here don't worry much about who will fill the prison — as long as it is filled.

Thomson, population 500, is like many small towns that follow the winding Mississippi north from St. Louis. Quaint farm houses. Pickups idling outside gas stations. Christmas lights down Main Streets struggling to keep their shops.

Except that Thomson soon may house one of the world's most notorious prisons.

President Obama, aiming to close the infamous Guantánamo Bay detention center, has targeted the state's unopened 1,600-bed, maximum-security prison here as a new home for about 100 terrorist suspects.

The Thomson Correctional Center, just a mile outside town, has fallen under an international spotlight the last month, as those within and without wonder how such a place could even think of hosting such people.

Dissenters have lined up. At a hearing near here last week, mothers mourned their sons and daughters lost in the war. Prison-guard-union leaders argued the state needs the space to ease its own prison crowding. Some politicians and conservative activists warned terrorists may target the region.

Residents in Thomson aren't thrilled about that part, either. But, with a few exceptions, most figure the trade-off is worth it.

Nearly everyone can rattle off the jobs lost around here:

Two grocery stores closed in Thomson. Two taverns on Main Street. A gas station. A pallet factory. A fastener plant. And the same goes for neighboring Savanna, Ill., — shoe stores, clothing stores, a pizza parlor, a five-and-dime shop.

And that doesn't include railroad jobs, which have dipped from hundreds to dozens, nor the Army Depot in Savanna that closed nearly 10 years ago after once employing as many as 7,200.

"That's a small-town melody across the central states," said Jon Whitney, who publishes a regional newspaper, The Carroll County Review. The newspaper represents the decline as well, consolidated from four town papers years ago.

Unemployment hovers near 11 percent. And without jobs, new families aren't moving in, or aren't staying.

"It's dying. This town is dying," said Luanne Bruckner, 60, a sixth-generation resident who traces her roots here to the son of a Revolutionary War soldier. "I don't want to see it go."

And, worse for some, they can't keep their children around. Bruckner has four. One is in New York, another in Houston. The closest is in Moline, Ill., an hour down the road. Only her youngest, a college student, was home the week before Christmas.

"I'd just love to see families stay together," Bruckner said.

So, the idea of a new prison represented hope here about a decade ago. The state built it specifically to help cover the loss of the Army Depot jobs.

And, for a while, the prison did bring work. Roads were widened and gas stations expanded in preparation for the increase in traffic. Shops opened. The Bruckners, for instance, built a hotel and a restaurant on One Mile Road, 500 yards from the prison, and housed workers and government employees during construction.

The city took out loans to build a sewer and water system.

Over the years, the new lockup even trained and hired guards. But the prison never opened. Locals count four times that it almost did. Each time, the state couldn't find the money.

Some places just couldn't take the wait. The hotel went from 70 percent occupancy to about 20 over the winters, Bruckner said. A gas station closed, as did other businesses. People who did get hired as guards, who had applied in the hopes of working in their hometowns, were transferred indefinitely.

"It screwed with several hundred of us," said Bryan LaShelle, 20, a local high-school grad who got a job at the Thomson prison and then was moved to the Pontiac Correctional Center, 150 miles away.

The prison eventually got about 200 minimum-security prisoners, housed in a dormitory just outside the main walls.

But the main prison sat, unopened. It is a castle of concrete, in the middle of wind-swept fields. Double fences rise 15 feet above ground, razor wire enmeshed between. Hundreds of cameras stand ready to spot motion, if any ever would come. Guard towers rise above, topped only by light poles ringing the compound.

"In the past eight years, we have held rallies, written petitions and taken bus trips to Springfield to bring attention and gain support in the Illinois General Assembly," the Thomson village president, Jerry Hebeler, wrote last month in a plea to Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn. "But the prison still hasn't opened."

Hebeler concluded, "After eight years of living in limbo, we are open to any and all alternatives."

Days later, Quinn wrote a letter to Secretary Defense Robert Gates, offering the place to hold terrorists.

No one knows what will happen in the coming months.

The Obama administration must find the millions of dollars it will need to buy the prison from Illinois, add a perimeter fence and turn it into a "supermax" facility. Congress must pass a law allowing the detainees to be held in the states. It could be 2011 before such details are ironed out.

But the potential is so promising.

A preliminary analysis released by the state estimates a shot of $790 million to $1.09 billion into the local economy over the first four years, between 2,340 and 3,250 ongoing jobs, new residents and a halving of the Carroll County unemployment rate.

Still, some do not think it's worth it.

Carla Spencer, a cashier at The Station, a convenience store on the main highway, said she never wanted any prison in Thomson. "So we packed up and moved," Spencer said. She's back now. Her dad died, and she's settling his estate. But she's not sure whether she'll stay.

Others fume at the prospect of having Guantánamo detainees on U.S. soil. And, sometimes — even just this Christmas Eve morning — harsh words are directed at leaders like Hebeler, from those befuddled at his choices.

But most here say they'll take the controversial prisoners, as long as they get the jobs that come with them.

"We have no jobs around here," said Jerry Bonjour, 71, from neighboring Savanna. "Young people are leaving. We need jobs."

Besides, said Bonjour with a straight face, it's not like locals are defenseless. "We've got enough old boys around here," he said, as if to warn potential escapees. "If they get out, they won't make it very far."

Even the supporters here realize life would change if the prison opened.

For some here, the beauty of Thomson is in the Mississippi River fishing, the deer blinds, the easy way of life.

Would a big federal prison, some wonder, bring big federal rules along with it?

"That's one thing that would be my fear, too," said Jim Fiser, 61. "Changing rules."

Would he be able to leave his boat in his driveway? Would they allow fishing on the river next to the prison? Would that easy way of life change?

"I know it's going to be a good thing," Fiser said. "But it's scary sometimes, too."