We Cannot Trust CoreCivic to Keep Anyone Safe — in Leavenworth or Anywhere Else

As a for-profit prison corporation, CoreCivic has a long track record of running facilities rife with dangerous conditions across the country—so much so that the company rebranded in 2016 to separate itself from its previous identity, Corrections Corporation of America. Across the country, CoreCivic is known for its mismanagement, forced labor, inhumane living conditions, excessive use of force, prolonged use of solitary confinement, medical negligence, physical and sexual abuse, spying and voyeurism, overcrowding, understaffing, and other civil rights violations. There are decades' worth of traumatized and deeply harmed staff and residents whose lives were forever changed by their experiences in a CoreCivic facility.

It has been no different at the CoreCivic facility in Leavenworth, Kansas.

Beyond the expected, hollow talking points from its responsive public affairs department, CoreCivic has never meaningfully answered for the "hell hole" of horrendous conditions when the Leavenworth housed federal detainees and the rampant violence that contributed to its closure. In 2021, the ACLU affiliates and federal public defender offices in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, and Nebraska sent a joint letter to the White House Domestic Policy Counsel detailing the numerous reports each office had received about the Leavenworth facility from current and former staff and from residents and their families. CoreCivic's severe understaffing and profit-driven shortcuts ensured that stabbings, suicides, and homicides occurred with alarming frequency. Weapons, drugs, and other contraband were a common occurrence. In addition to all of the violence, CoreCivic neglected basic human needs in its Leavenworth Facility, restricting food, curtailing or cutting off contact with legal counsel and family, limiting medical care and even basic necessities like showers.

To their credit, the U.S. Marshall ended its contract with CoreCivic at the end of 2021 and opted not to renew it. The Leavenworth, or Midwest Regional, facility has sat empty since.

But an empty building is a financial loss—and it's no secret CoreCivic has been yearning to fill the Midwest Regional facility back up and hit those quarterly financial goals. Where the Constitution creates some obstacles to that profitability by establishing basic human rights for people facing criminal charges, it's clear that CoreCivic has turned to an easier money maker: immigration detention. Under the Biden administration, CoreCivic and other corporations' profits skyrocketed with increased ICE detentions, and little is expected to change with the new Trump administration.

Last week, CoreCivic submitted its application to the City of Leavenworth, an explicit statement of its purpose of opening the facility for ICE detentions. The city's planning commission will hold a public hearing on the permit on Friday, April 4.

Numerous members of the Leavenworth community have made it clear that CoreCivic is unwelcome, for a wide range of reasons. 

We know that we cannot trust CoreCivic and its approach to business to keep anyone safe - and we cannot afford the cost of allowing it to reopen the Midwest Regional facility that would harm immigrants, their families, staff, and the surrounding community.

Take action now: sign the petition opposing the facility, contact the Leavenworth City Commission, and join us at their hearing on April 4.