The further away from Chicago, the better – that is, if it has to happen at all!

It has become the immigration-related issue that just won’t die, and manages to take on a more intense character of pathos with each evolution it makes in the process.

The old Dwight Correctional Center for women ceased to exist in 2013

No, I’m not talking about President Donald Trump’s fantasies of erecting a wall of sorts along the U.S./Mexico border.

THIS IS ABOUT the notion of building detention facilities with which to lock up people awaiting immigration-related offenses that could result in their eventual deportation from this country.

Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have dreams of using facilities scattered across the nation – including one whose intent would be to hold people found living in the Chicago-area while lacking a valid Visa or legitimate citizenship status.

Currently, people facing immigration violations often get sent off to county jails with which the federal government has contracts with. In our case, many people caught here wind up in the McHenry County Jail to wait while their immigration cases are resolved.

A concept that offends many people because it means that people who haven’t committed a criminal offense (no matter how much the ideologues want to think it ought to be regarded as one) are being locked up with people who HAVE committed crimes and are merely awaiting the day they’re sent off to the custody of the Illinois Department of Corrections to serve their time.

THE IDEA IS that having these separate detention facilities means we can take the immigration cases out of jail with criminals. But we can still treat the individuals like criminals – which is what the ideologues are really after!

The problem is that people of rationality hate the idea of any kind of facility that is jail-like from being in or near their communities.

Dwight not far enough from Chgo for project

That is why local officials in places like Joliet, Crete and Hopkins Park in Illinois, along with Hobart, Gary and Elkhart County in Indiana, have all turned down the idea – not giving in to the fact that many of these places (particularly Gary, Ind.) could use the economic boost that could be derived from construction of a new facility and the possibility of jobs for people already living there.

This is just not a popular idea, which is why it seems officials are looking for a site further and further away from the heart of Chicago that will say “yes” and accept their plans.

THE BLOOMINGTON PANTAGRAPH is reporting that officials are looking at Dwight (a Livingston County community not far from the interstate connecting Chicago to St. Louis) as a possible site.

Local planning commission officials are considering annexation of a site near down so they can offer it up to federal officials for the plan.

Perhaps people are figuring Dwight is the right kind of place for detention facilities because, for many years, Dwight was the location of the Illinois Corrections Department facility for women found guilty of criminal offenses.

Maybe they also figure that a community with less than 2 percent Latino ethnic composition of its population won’t share the kind of hang-ups that communities up our way have with regards to such facilities.

ALTHOUGH THIS COULD be one of those instances where people surprise us by overcoming whatever hang-ups they may have and wind up doing the right thing.

As much as I like the idea that this ‘detention’ concept for immigration is now solidly outside of the Chicago metropolitan area (most of us only regard Dwight as a train stop between here and Springfield when they’re forced to use Amtrak), it is a concept that would be better off withering away altogether.

This detention center in Tacoma, Wash., could be replicated in Dwight

Because we ought to be trying to figure out ways to make better sense of our federal immigration laws and clean up the bureaucratic mess that we now have.

Instead of building facilities so we can house people with pending cases so we can let them stretch out even longer – before the ideologues try to have their way of deporting everybody from this country who isn’t exactly like themselves.

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I feel fortunate to have (thus far) avoided tornadoes and other natural disasters

Even before I read the news reports this weekend, I knew that there would be something resembling disaster very near to us. I just didn’t know which Illinois towns would make the datelines.

It turned out to be Streator and Dwight, as serious tornadoes that cut through the Midwestern United States caused severe damage in multiple states besides Illinois.

WHAT GAVE ME my inkling was having the television on late Saturday. I was listening to it more than watching it, but the nasty buzz of the Emergency Broadcast System is not something that can be ignored.

Which is why I happened to hear the warnings with their computer-generated mechanized voice telling literally where tornadoes were being seen, and warning people in those communities to take shelter immediately.

At the particular moment that caught my attention, the tornadoes were headed east near Chebanse, a town on the Will/Kankakee county line right on Interstate 57. My gut reaction upon hearing this was to think, “it’s skipping Chicago.”

Because that point is literally what many people would consider to be the boundary between the Chicago metropolitan area and the rest of Illinois (although I am aware that Kankakee residents to the south are a part of the Chicago broadcast market).

WHICH MEANS THAT by thinking it was skipping by Chicago, I literally breathed a sigh of relief. That doesn’t mean I’m glad we didn’t suffer while people in Dwight did. It means that am fully aware of the fact that I realize a tornado is the great equalizer of the Midwest.

A powerful enough funnel cloud can devastate miles-long stretches of rural land, or take down a city block. It plays no favorites.

As much as some people like to tell tacky jokes about tornadoes that involve mobile home communities, I have always wondered how severe the wreckage and fatalities would be if a funnel cloud were to touch down at the northeast corner of Wacker Drive and Jackson Boulevard (otherwise known as the Willis Tower).

It doesn’t even have to be the tallest bulding in Chicago. Anywhere in “the Loop” would be bad. Depending on what time it would strike, the potential for carnage is significant.

FOR THE RECORD, modern-day downtown Chicago (as in the past century) has never had a tornado touchdown. The last recorded one in the area now considered downtown was on May 6, 1876, with 11 other tornado “touchdowns” taking place since 1870 within what we now regard as the city limits.

Which makes me wonder if we’re overdue. I know, you’d rather I focus on whether the Chicago Blackhawks can win the Stanley Cup Wednesday, or if they’re going to drag this out until week’s end. Somehow, I think those people on the fringes of Chicago now have something much more real to worry about than pro hockey.

It also does not help that I still remember being a reporter-type person writing copy for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago on Aug. 28, 1990 when a tornado with winds exceeding 261 miles per hour struck suburban Plainfield.

It remains the most powerful tornado to ever hit the Chicago area, although the people who live in that Will County community still remember it as the moment when 29 people were suddenly killed – and another 350 injured.

I STILL REMEMBER the wreckage and rubble that suddenly erupted, comparable to what cut across the border between metro Chicago and central Illinois.

It remains to be seen how quickly those communities will be able to rebuild. It may even wind up becoming a positive story in watching how this weekend’s tornado victims are able to rebuild their lives after losing everything (while being thankful for whichever friends and relatives survived uninjured).

But I also will admit there is a difference between my seeing this kind of wreckage firsthand, and actually experiencing it – which is something I have not yet done in my life (and would not mind if I somehow managed to miss out on that experience).

The closest I can recall is back when I was 12 and saw funnel clouds developing in the skies above where I lived then in suburban Lansing. I still recall the feeling of dread while sitting in the basement, wondering at what moment the “destruction” would hit.

I WAS LUCKY. The funnel clouds I saw didn’t touch down anywhere close to where I lived then. I had a fortunate feeling that disaster had somehow skipped by me.

Similar to how I felt late Saturday when I was at the far southern end of Cook County near the Cook/Will border – hearing emergency warnings telling me that just one county away, potential existed for people to suffer.

That is too close for my comfort.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: From the serious to the overly dramatic, this pair of videos help remind us of that day nearly 20 years ago when the Chicago area was hit with its most powerful tornado ever.