Would you like to have a foreign terror suspect living in your backyard? Some folks in Illinois may not have a choice in the matter.

A plan to use an underutilized prison outside Chicago as a home for foreign terrorists is running into opposition from Illinois Republicans over safety concerns.

The Thomson Correctional Facility, located in rural Illinois about 150 miles west of Chicago, was built in 2001 to house 1,600 inmates. Currently, only 200 inmates call the facility home.

So with the proposed closing of Guantanamo Bay (the military-run detention center that has been used to hold terrorism suspects) in Cuba, U.S. officials have been looking for a secure facility in the United States to hold the suspected foreign criminals until they are tried and sent back to their home nations.

Two of the state's most powerful politicians, Gov. Pat Quinn and U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, have backed the idea of selling Thomson to the feds, adding that it could bring 3,000 badly needed jobs to the state.

Republicans in the state, led by GOP gubernatorial candidate Andy McKenna, though, have criticized the plan for bringing "terrorists to Illinois."

President Barack Obama has promised to close Guantanamo Bay, which was opened by George W. Bush in 2006 and has earned international condemnation for its treatment of prisoners in light of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Although Obama earned praise abroad for his decision to close the facility, it has left him with a huge problem: where to put the 215 prisoners until they are tried.

Last week, the Obama administration announced plans to move the trial of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to a Manhattan courtroom. That decision has drawn mixed responses.