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

Take action now: sign the petition opposing the facility, contact the Leavenworth City Commission, and make your voice heard at their upcoming hearings in March, April, and May. 

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, many by permanent and debilitating injuries, from 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 facility housed federal detainees and the rampant violence that contributed to its closure. A 2017 U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General's report found understaffing and lack of oversight that lead to “issues affecting the safety and security” of the facility, and detainees and officers there at the time have expressed that conditions only got worse after that report. 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.

In consistency with then-President Biden's policy against private prisons, the U.S. Marshall allowed its contract with CoreCivic to end as planned in December 2021. The Leavenworth facility, or Midwest Regional Reception Center, 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 profitability by establishing basic human rights for people on American soil, it's nonetheless clear that CoreCivic has turned to an easier moneymaker: 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. CoreCivic was also heavily involved in family separation, and tried to silence journalists who reported on it. 

In late February, CoreCivic submitted its application to the City of Leavenworth, an explicit statement of its purpose of opening the facility for ICE detentions. In previous years when the possibility of an ICE facility has arisen, numerous members of the Leavenworth community have made it clear that, for a wide range of reasons, CoreCivic is unwelcome in Kansas's First City.

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.

The City's planning commission will hold its first official public hearing on the permit on Monday, April 7. You can attend one of the City Commission's upcoming meetings and speak for 2-3 minutes during the public comment period by signing up on the sheet at a regular meeting. The City Commission's first consideration of the SUP is May 13, and the second consideration is May 27, when it may be voted on (please see the attached statement from the City of Leavenworth at the bottom of this page). You can also submit written comment to the City at [email protected] and [email protected].