CHICAGO HEIGHTS | Congressional candidate and Crete resident Debbie Halvorson detests the idea of a privately run detention center for those facing federal immigration violations being built in her hometown just as much as her opponent does.

But Halvorson said Tuesday she thinks U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., is mishandling his efforts to try to stop such a facility from being built.

Halvorson used a meeting with African-American ministers at the Brothers Keeper Outreach Church, 283 E. 14th St., to include an attack on Jackson, whom she is challenging in the March 20 Democratic primary for the Illinois 2nd Congressional District.

Jackson said last week he opposes a facility from being built in Crete, both because he doesn't want a prison facility in the area and because he objects to the way it would be used to enforce immigration policies.

Halvorson said she agrees with that. But she said she thinks Jackson is trying to pressure local officials into doing the work of stopping such a facility from being built. Instead, she thinks Jackson should be trying to get Congress itself to stop these private detention facilities from being built anywhere in the United States.

"He's a member of Congress. He should be fighting this at the federal level," said Halvorson. "You can't fight these things town by town."

But Jackson spokesman Rick Bryant said the congressman is focusing on this one facility because it is the one being proposed in his district. Bryant said Jackson has tried to get Congress to oppose such facilities, and on Monday sent a letter to President Barack Obama expressing such a view.

In the case of Crete, village officials were contacted last year by Corrections Corp. of America, which says it wants to build a 750-bed medium-security jail facility between Burrville and Crete-Monee roads, near the Balmoral Park Racetrack. Earlier this week, a meeting was held giving people a chance to express their views on the matter.

Similar facilities already exist in far northwest suburban Woodstock, along with Mount Vernon and Ullin in Southern Illinois. They are used to hold people picked up on possible violations of immigration law, and are meant to be an alternative to holding such people in local jails while their immigration cases are pending.

But Halvorson said she thinks such incarceration is wrong.

"Somebody gets stopped for a busted light (on their car) and they get held for months in one of these places and they get split from their family while their immigration status is determined. That's not right," she said.

She said Congress, instead of allowing these facilities to be built to accommodate growing numbers of people facing possible immigration violations, should instead be working to reform the nation's immigration laws to allow families to remain intact and allow people a path to obtaining legal resident status.