TOPEKA — In California, a group of immigrants is suing CoreCivic, alleging inhumane conditions with inadequate food and water, failure to offer adequate medical care and denying access to counsel.
In Tennessee, multiple lawsuits have accused the company of failing to keep detainees safe. In April, a jury awarded $28 million to a prisoner who was severely beaten by another inmate who had previously assaulted 11 other prisoners, according to Tennessee Lookout.
Reports like these raise concerns for Leavenworth-area residents and activists, who point to mismanagement and problems in CoreCivic’s Leavenworth facility before it closed in 2021.
CoreCivic applied Monday to receive a special use permit from Leavenworth to reopen its prison as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee center, called the Midwest Regional Reception Center.
City manager Scott Peterson has said the special permitting process would allow Leavenworth officials to address concerns about how the facility operates. Generally, cities have broad abilities to impose additional requirements on a special use permit as long as they are applicable to the property’s use, he said.
On Tuesday, 19 people spoke during a public comment session at the standing-room-only Leavenworth City Council meeting to share their concerns about CoreCivic and ask the city to deny the company’s special use permit application.
“I’m here tonight to ask and encourage you to continue defending Leavenworth from the historic mismanagement and negligence of CoreCivic and to do what you can to block CoreCivic and ICE from opening a detention center here in our community,” said James Gillcrist, an Iraq War veteran who spoke at the meeting.
Gillcrist said the current political situation is triggering strong emotions in him and his fellow veterans.
“This past July I spent a week in the high-risk suicide wing of the VA psych ward after snapping at an immigration court in Kansas City. I can say with confidence that the actions of ICE are re-traumatizing a community of veterans that was already estimated to suffer over 150,000 suicides over the next decade,” Gillcrist said.
“That number will only increase as ICE continues to patrol our streets, hunting down people who, like the Iraqi families I saw in the Sunni triangle, were simply born in the wrong time, in the wrong place, in conditions most Americans can neither imagine nor fathom,” he added.
Elizabeth Collier, who lives in nearby Independence, Missouri, told the council she worries constantly that her mother, who is from Peru, may be picked up by immigration authorities.
“She has the crime of an accent,” Collier said. “Even though she’s a citizen, I wonder every day if my mom makes it home safe, and thank God for iPhone and ‘find my iPhone,’ I’m able to check. But this doesn’t feel like something that is right. This government overreach that others have already experienced in other areas feels like it’s going to come to this area.”
Collier said CoreCivic’s presence in Leavenworth won’t just affect that city but will leech into other areas.
“That’s what I just want to share with you guys, is this feeling of fear, of not knowing — that I’ve already lost my father, if I will lose my mother to completely preventable situations, and you guys are the ones that can prevent it,” she said.
The background
Leavenworth’s disagreement with Nashville-based CoreCivic — which led to at least four court cases — began in February, when CoreCivic stopped working with the city to receive a special use permit. Instead, the company said it didn’t need the permit to reopen its facility, which pushed Leavenworth officials to file a lawsuit to stop the company from reopening without it.
CoreCivic’s desire to reopen is based on a $60 million annual ICE contract to house 1,033 immigrant detainees in the Leavenworth facility. The contract is not enforceable until legal actions are settled, though.
The company’s stock, traded on the New York Stock Exchange as CXW, hit a five-year high in November because of the ICE contracts it has received.
After a recent loss in court, CoreCivic is back with a new permit application.
Brian Todd, CoreCivic spokesman, said in an email that the company is “firmly committed to operating a safe, transparent and accountable facility.”
He said the decision to file for the special use permit was an effort to meet the urgent needs of the federal government with respect to its immigration enforcement efforts. Todd emphasized that the company still believes it should be able to operate without a special use permit.
“We’re hopeful in following the SUP (special use permit) process as the City has instructed, that they will in turn process our application in a fair and timely manner and work collaboratively to reach a positive and mutually beneficial resolution,” he said.
CoreCivic attorney Taylor Hausmann told a district court judge in June that even though the company had meetings with the city at the end of 2024 to apply for a permit, CoreCivic never believed it needed one.
Hausmann said CoreCivic withdrew its application because the city was required to hold a hearing within 60 days and that “unilaterally and without any stated reason or any basis in its regulations, the city moved that original meeting to outside the 60-day time zone that violates the city’s regulations.”
“It became clear to CoreCivic that there was not a cooperative relationship happening there, and thus CoreCivic fell back on its position that it was not required to have it, and that this was not going to work, to move together cooperatively,” she said.
Worries continue
Leavenworth activists and area residents are concerned the city’s development process won’t be able to ensure that CoreCivic treats detainees and employees well, a concern that has been borne out in other communities.
“My biggest concerns, in general, are that we’re going to see the same CoreCivic that we have prior to them closing, that they’re still going to be mistreating people within their facility, whether it’s the workers or the migrants that are being detained,” said Ashley Hernandez, organizing and policy coordinator with the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, in an interview with Kansas Reflector.
Unfortunately, national reports indicate that CoreCivic won’t behave any differently, she said.
“We see a lot coming out of Trousdale in Tennessee and how CoreCivic interacts with other municipal governments similarly to how they interacted with the Leavenworth government by trying to bypass them and do their thing without any oversight,” she said.
Hernandez is hopeful the special use permit will include oversight requirements and would give the city the power to rescind the permit.
In court filings, the city’s attorneys listed failure to cooperate with local police as one of the difficulties the company previously created in Leavenworth. They opened their first filing with a quote from U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson, who called the Leavenworth facility “an absolute hell hole.”
“Guards are being traumatized. Guards have been almost killed. Detainees are being traumatized with assaults and batteries, and not long ago a detainee was killed,” Robinson wrote in a court order.
Hernandez said the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth wants accountability.
“We want the city to make sure that CoreCivic is maintaining human dignity and civil rights standards within the facility,” she said.
Justin Young, who is on the Carceral Accountability Council, said he’s pleased the city has retained its power to affect the situation.
The council was formed in 2024 when CoreCivic announced it would reopen the local facility as an ICE detention center, Young said. The group advocated for CoreCivic to follow the city’s development process.
Now, Young said, they want the city to recognize that CoreCivic is not a “trustworthy” community partner.
“They don’t have the history of a well-managed and humane organization. They don’t have accountability. They lack transparency,” he said.
