It was a stunning Might night in Leavenworth, Kansas, however as an alternative of strolling alongside the Missouri River or gardening, a gaggle of locals sat on squeaky folding chairs on the public library to debate their mission: Find out how to cease a non-public jail behemoth from warehousing immigrants down the street.
This was taking place in a famously pro-prison city, house to one of many oldest federal penitentiaries, and the place President Donald Trump gained greater than 60% of the vote in 2024. Apart from the navy and the Veterans Affairs medical middle, prisons are the most important employer on this neighborhood, 30 miles northwest of Kansas Metropolis. With federal immigration detention services across the nation packed as a result of Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, the non-public jail business is experiencing a growth. Inventory costs of firms like GEO Group and CoreCivic soared as they gained scores of contracts.
However when CoreCivic utilized earlier this yr for a allow in Leavenworth to reopen a jail with a troubled historical past to carry immigration detainees, metropolis officers balked. And native residents — together with some former jail staff — pushed again.
That night on the library, the residents waited to listen to whether or not a federal choose would determine if Leavenworth had the correct to inform CoreCivic to buzz off. No matter what occurred in courtroom, organizers of this “teach-in” have been making ready attendees for the following doable spherical of the struggle. Over do-it-yourself chocolate chip cookies and solar tea, they talked about easy methods to get letters printed within the Leavenworth Instances and reminded attendees to politely pester elected officers.
Native organizer (and cookie baker) Rick Hammett steered to the gang that political and company pursuits had stirred fears of immigrants forward of the 2024 election cycle to learn non-public prisons.
“To be worthwhile, non-public jail corporations should be certain that prisons aren’t solely constructed but additionally stuffed,” Hammett mentioned. “Which is how you find yourself with a scare tactic over migrants to drum up a cause to place folks in jail.”
In early June, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported essentially the most immigrant arrests in a single day in its historical past: Greater than 2,200 folks.
Ashley Hernandez is an organizer for the Sisters of Charity Leavenworth, one of many teams opposing the privately run immigration detention facility.
Ashley Hernandez, an organizer for the Sisters of Charity Leavenworth, lamented that CoreCivic has portrayed those that oppose the detention facility as “out-of-town” agitators. However this room is stuffed with locals, she famous. “They’re the skin group.”
The Sisters of Charity is a Catholic convent — they like the time period “neighborhood” — that has been in Leavenworth longer than the prisons — even earlier than statehood. A part of the Sisters’ mission is to “advocate for justice and systemic change” for exploited and marginalized folks, Hernandez later defined.
The nuns “perceive the historical past of injustices which have gone on in that jail, and so they’ve by no means been okay with that,” she mentioned.
Leavenworth’s landmarks trace at a progressive previous that dates to at the very least the 1850s, when Kansas opposed slavery and fought for admission to the U.S. as a free state. The hassle’s most radical proposal was the “Leavenworth Structure,” which asserted that “all males are by nature equally free and impartial.” Leavenworth’s metropolis corridor has statues of Woman Liberty and President Abraham Lincoln; a close-by park has a plaque for ladies’s suffragist Susan B. Anthony, who frolicked right here together with her newspaper writer brother. The panorama is dotted with little reminders that individuals who don’t have energy can all the time struggle for it.
Downtown Leavenworth, Kansas, in June 2025.
Many locals bear in mind what occurred when CoreCivic beforehand ran the detention middle, housing principally pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals from 1992-2021. They recall guards who have been completely injured by assaults from prisoners, and understaffing that undermined safety, based on a federal audit.
Mike Trapp, a neighborhood author and activist who reserved the room for the library teach-in, mentioned he’s seen some softening just lately amongst his neighbors who’re Trump voters. Even those that assist the mass deportations “are on our facet in not trusting CoreCivic to do the correct factor,” he mentioned.
Scandals plagued the power throughout its closing years of operation — beatings, stabbings, suicides and alleged sexual assaults, based on courtroom data. Leavenworth police mentioned they have been blocked on the gate from investigating crimes inside. The ability lastly closed in 2021 because the Biden administration shifted away from non-public jail contracts.
Town modified its ordinance since CoreCivic initially opened a jail right here, simply six miles south of the federal authorities’s personal huge medium-security penitentiary, which has been working since 1903. The principles now require a brand new jail operator to search a metropolis allow. CoreCivic paid a price and utilized for a allow in February to reopen its facility, now referred to as the Midwest Regional Reception Middle. However the agency shortly reversed course as residents’ opposition mounted.
CoreCivic argued in courtroom filings that as a result of it retained staff in Leavenworth, it by no means actually closed — and didn’t want a allow to reopen the power. Metropolis leaders responded by suing in federal courtroom, after which state courtroom, looking for to dam CoreCivic from repopulating the power. In filings, the town argued the corporate beforehand ran an “absolute hell gap,” and the notorious American jail city didn’t need this one.
In an editorial within the Kansas Reflector, critics of reopening the jail fumed: “CoreCivic has repeatedly proven that it’s incapable of working a humane facility. Now, the corporate flouts metropolis approval to maneuver ahead with an ICE middle primarily based on false guarantees.”
Some in Leavenworth opposed the brand new facility as a result of they feared a flood of undocumented immigrants may very well be launched domestically, main CoreCivic to repeatedly promise that any settlement with ICE would strictly prohibit that.
In early June, a state district choose sided with the town and issued a brief injunction, saying the corporate wanted a allow.
David Waters, a lawyer for the town, mentioned the case is about following the allowing course of and never about “immigration coverage, writ massive.”
Every week later, CoreCivic filed a movement asking the District Court docket choose to rethink, arguing that the town did not show reopening the power would trigger “irreparable” future hurt or that the corporate wanted a allow.
Leaders at CoreCivic have dismissed critics, saying the corporate has had greater than 1,600 candidates for 300 jobs with a beginning wage of $28.25 per hour, plus advantages.
“We preserve the place that our facility, which we have operated for nearly 30 years, doesn’t require a Particular Use Allow to take care of detainees in partnership with ICE,” mentioned Ryan Gustin, senior director of public affairs, in an e mail.
He touted the corporate’s guarantees to Leavenworth: A one-time influence price of $1 million, a $250,000 annual price, and an extra $150,000 annual price to the police division. That is along with the over $1 million in annual property taxes CoreCivic already pays, Gustin mentioned.
The Reception Middle initially anticipated “residents” as of June 1. The corporate has posted quite a few images of its warden handing out $10,000 checks to veteran’s causes and the Salvation Military.
In authorized filings, CoreCivic argued that stopping the opening of its 1,000-plus mattress facility would value it greater than $4 million per 30 days. In a federal monetary disclosure filed in Might, the corporate said its letter settlement for the Leavenworth facility with ICE approved cost as much as almost $23 million for a six-month interval “whereas the events work to barter and execute a long-term contract.”
Gustin mentioned many of the issues about security and safety of the power have been “concentrated in an 18-month interval” over 30 years of operations, and attributed staffing shortages to the COVID-19 pandemic and a good labor market. “As with all tough scenario, we sought to study from it,” he mentioned.
When CoreCivic beforehand operated the Leavenworth Detention Middle, Tina Shonk-Little was detained there for about 16 months for insurance coverage fraud. She described for the gang that night time on the Leavenworth library how medical and dental care within the facility was scant.
“In the event you had a toothache, they simply pulled it,” she mentioned. Her smile bears the scars.
She recoiled when Hammett cited public data displaying CoreCivic’s CEO earned greater than $7 million final yr. Company leaders at CoreCivic and GEO Group gushed on latest earnings calls concerning the “unprecedented alternative” they’re going through with Trump in workplace. Adverts and textual content messages present CoreCivic is providing new guards $2,500 signing bonuses.
Throughout the river in rural Missouri, cash-strapped sheriff’s departments are signing as much as maintain ICE detainees in small jails for $110 per night time, per head, and to move them so far as Kansas Metropolis for $1.10 per mile. Emails obtained via public data requests present that a few week after Trump was elected, CoreCivic management started contacting Leavenworth metropolis officers about reopening their facility there.
“They do not need to do higher. They’re in it for revenue,” Shonk-Little mentioned. “They may give two shits concerning the folks. The extra folks they’ve, the higher off they’re as a result of it is more cash of their pocket.”
Shonk-Little expressed sympathy for the corrections officers who labored there. “God bless the corrections officers who did what they might with what they’d,” she mentioned.
Towards the again of the room sat Invoice Rogers, a brick wall of a person who spends almost two hours a day within the health club. He was a kind of guards. A couple of minutes after her speech, Rogers stood instantly, trying like a frog was lodged in his throat, as his eyes welled with tears.
Invoice Rogers is a former correctional officer who labored at CoreCivic’s detention middle in Leavenworth. He opposes the corporate’s plan to reopen the power.
He spoke on to Shonk-Little: “What braveness… to come back right here. And every little thing you mentioned was proper. It was true. I bear in mind. And as a former officer, I apologize. That is all I can say.”
She responded: “I am sorry you have been handled the way in which you have been handled additionally.”
They hugged.
At a espresso store the following morning, Rogers defined he was a highschool dropout and heavy gear operator who thought $20 an hour, plus advantages, working for CoreCivic seemed like a superb gig.
“I simply wanted a job,” he recalled. He began working as a correctional officer in 2016 and initially liked it.
“I wager you 85% of these inmates I met? I’d have frolicked with them on the road. They have been simply first rate individuals who made a mistake. I actually imagine that,” he mentioned.
Not lengthy after Rogers began, the voluntary time beyond regulation shifts grew to become obligatory. A 2017 audit by the Division of Justice discovered that understaffing was hurting security and safety on the facility. In latest courtroom filings, legal professionals for Leavenworth accused CoreCivic of gross mismanagement of the earlier facility, leading to “Rampant abuse, violence and violations of the constitutional rights of its detainees and employees.”
Invoice Rogers gathered data in opposition to his former employer’s deliberate immigrant detention facility.
They referenced one incident in November 2018, when CoreCivic didn’t report the loss of life of an inmate to metropolis police for six days.
It’s that loss of life that haunts Rogers’ desires. Dillon Reed was solely 29 when he ended up on the Leavenworth facility on a drug cost, however Rogers remembered he was a humorous, candy child who reminded him of his grownup son.
“He made me snort,” Rogers mentioned.
Reed had an dependancy, and alcohol and medicines have been rampant contained in the jail, Rogers mentioned. On Thanksgiving Day in 2018, Reed was discovered lifeless in his cell. Rogers was working in a unique part of the power, however he was referred to as to take away Reed’s physique from his cell. An post-mortem later confirmed that Reed possible died of sudden cardiac loss of life, with a mix of alcohol and medicines in his system.
Rogers nonetheless can’t speak about it with out getting choked up. Calling an ambulance shortly might have saved Reed, he mentioned.
“When that door got here open? I didn’t see an inmate. I noticed a younger man…and I noticed my son,” he mentioned. “I don’t care that he was an inmate…he was a human soul. He shouldn’t have died. We had a job to do, and it didn’t occur that day.”
In 2020, Rogers was stabbed within the hand and had his head cut up open with a cafeteria tray by combative prisoners. Later that yr, he was so fed up with the dearth of safety, he mentioned, that when a prisoner got here at him, he shoved the person in opposition to the wall — and was fired.
A few of Rogers’ former detention officer mates gained’t speak to him anymore, as a result of he’s been talking out, he mentioned. He mentioned they inform him: “You didn’t do shit if you labored there, and now you’re working your mouth.”
Rogers’ former CoreCivic colleague Marcia Levering can also be talking out concerning the assault by a prisoner that just about killed her. She was working in February 2021, shortly earlier than the power closed, when a colleague opened the fallacious safety door. A prisoner who was offended at her beat her senselessly and stabbed her a number of occasions. She spent two months within the hospital and is now completely disabled, struggling to pay her hire.
“They are not looking for the security of their inmates or employees,” Levering mentioned of CoreCivic. “They’re looking for their very own self-interest, which is taking the taxpayers’ cash to line the pockets of their higher-ups.”
Attorneys for the Metropolis of Leavenworth filed a movement final week asking the state district choose to formalize the short-term injunction. The movement states that the “federal authorities would possibly apply stress on CoreCivic to defy or search for loopholes on this Court docket’s orders,” whereas noting that the corporate has “accelerated” exercise on the detention middle.
In the meantime, residents are planning a march in opposition to the detention middle for July 19. They plan to satisfy 10 days earlier at Momo’s Knitting Nook to make do-it-yourself protest indicators.
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