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 ICE.
“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.
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.
