Michigan continues to be in the running to potentially house Guantánamo Bay detainees, despite plans for federal officials to tour a nearly empty prison in rural Illinois today.
An unnamed White House official quoted during the weekend, said the Thomson Correctional Facility, 150 miles west of Chicago, has emerged as a "leading option” in the search for a prison for the 228 detainees.
"We've had no indication that a decision of any kind has been made,” Liz Boyd, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's spokeswoman, said Sunday.
Granholm has stopped short of endorsing the idea of housing the detainees in Michigan, citing security concerns.
In August, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons toured the Standish Maximum Correctional Facility in northeast Michigan. That 600-bed facility closed Oct. 31 because of state budget cuts. Standish officials have been lobbying to use the empty prison to house federal prisoners and others.
State Sen. Mike Bishop, a Republican from Rochester, has been an outspoken opponent of the plan.
Last month, he held a town hall meeting that drew about 150 people to hear a panel of speakers opposed to bringing the detainees to Michigan. Bishop could not be reached for comment Sunday.
The White House had hoped to close Guantánamo by Jan, 22, but that deadline now seems unlikely to be met.
Contact L.L.BRASIER: 248-858-2262 or lbrasier@freepress.com. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Location of Thomson in Illinois
The  has announced that it is considering sending Guantanamo Bay detainees to a state prison in northwestern Illinois.  

Governor  and President  discussed a federal purchase of the Thomson Correctional Center in  during Quinn's visit to Washington on November 4. The purchase would bring a desperately needed $200 million to the state government. Senator  said in a statement last Saturday that the purchase would also bring fewer than 100 Guantanamo detainees to the prison and create 3,000 new jobs in the local economy.

Republican opposition has already begun. Representative  warned in a letter to the President, "As home to America's tallest building, we should not invite Al Qaeda to make Illinois its number one target." Representative , whose district includes Thomson, has stated that he is "fighting efforts to bring these terrorists onto our shores ... where they could one day be released into our communities."

Built in 2001, the Thomson prison is the newest maximum-security prison in Illinois. However, it currently does not hold any maximum-security inmates but has 200 minimum-security inmates.