For-profit Kansas prison with troubled history could house immigrants for mass deportation
KANSAS CITY, Mo. – On the outskirts of Leavenworth, Kansas, sits an imposing concrete structure ringed with razor wire fencing. The prison hasn’t held an inmate in over three years, but its for-profit operators intend to change that soon.
Before being shuttered in 2021, CoreCivic’s Leavenworth facility served as a maximum-security federal prison, housing violent offenders on behalf of the U.S. Marshals Service in 192,000 square feet of stark white cinder blocks, drywall and closed-circuit television cameras.
If all goes to plan, the rebranded Midwest Regional Reception Center could soon hold hundreds of immigrants rounded up by federal authorities, including people whose only offense is failure to obtain legal status in the U.S.
President Donald Trump has promised millions of deportations in his second term in the White House, and according to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the first month of the new administration saw Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest 20,000 people.
Some of those detainees are already being held in a different Leavenworth facility. Under a February agreement between ICE and the Federal Bureau of Prisons obtained by The Star, FCI Leavenworth is one of five federal prisons designated to hold ICE detainees as the agency works to expand its infrastructure.
CoreCivic, the nation’s largest private prison chain, has repeatedly approached city and county officials about entering into a contract with ICE in the years since a Joe Biden executive order prompted the Leavenworth closure by discontinuing DOJ contracts with private prisons.
In 2023, local officials short-circuited negotiations when loud opposition from residents prompted the county to stop serving as an intermediary between the company and ICE. A renewed effort in 2024 was met with similar resistance, from concerns over the prison’s history of violence to fears that immigrants brought to Leavenworth might take up permanent residence there.
“I had a ton of blowback from constituents about the possibilities of just illegal immigrants coming through the facility and then being released into the community,” said state Rep. David Buehler, a Lansing Republican whose district includes the shuttered detention center.
“The big concern last year, and particularly with the Biden administration, is that there was no guarantee. In fact, the more that we tried to dig into it, there was no guarantee that people would actually be deported.”
‘Good government steward’
On May 13, the Leavenworth City Commission will decide whether to grant a special use permit to CoreCivic authorizing it to operate its facility as an immigrant detention facility.
The company says it could support up to 1,033 incarcerated people, creating 300 jobs and generating upward of $2 million a year for Leavenworth between fees paid to local government, agreements with law enforcement to support the facility and property taxes that are already being paid.
But company officials aren’t convinced the special use permit is necessary for them to enter into a contract with ICE.
“We feel that we have always operated this facility by right and have done so for the last 30 years,” said Ryan Gustin, CoreCivic’s public affairs director.
“And so our feeling is that we have the ability to operate as an ICE detention facility, but the city of Leavenworth has asked us to follow a special use permit, and so we’re doing that to be kind of a good government steward,” Gustin said.
Buehler said he believes Trump means what he says about mass deportations. In light of that, reopening CoreCivic’s facility deserves careful consideration, he said.
“It did at one time provide jobs and opportunities for the community. And it’s just been a big, ugly building for years now,” Buehler said.
The Midwest Regional Reception Center is one of five correctional facilities in Leavenworth County, along with FCI Leavenworth, Lansing State Prison, the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth and a day reporting center owned by another private prison company, GEO Group.
“Because we have a reputation as a prison town, people feel like it’s unsafe to be here,” said Cindy Grisham, a Leavenworth resident who doesn’t want to see CoreCivic prison become an immigrant detention center.
“I’m afraid that if they get that detention center filled up with illegals that the county’s just dumping on us,” Grisham said. “I feel like different law enforcement in the area will just drop them off at the outskirts of Leavenworth and just say, ‘Keep walking down that way and you’ll see a homeless shelter.’ ”
Gustin said immigrants exiting the Leavenworth facility would either be processed at the Kansas City, Missouri, ICE office 30 miles away or flown out from the Kansas City International Airport.
“Just like the rest of the prisons here, inmates’ families come to be with their loved ones that are incarcerated,” said Ken Ivey, another Leavenworth resident. “So I don’t think (the) crime rate is going to be an issue or it’s going to go up or down, but there’s a lot of concern about that.”
Ivey said he opposes Trump’s immigration crackdown and the dehumanizing anti-immigrant rhetoric he sees flooding comment sections online where the detention center is being discussed.
“There’s a dynamic where they came here for a good, better life, if you want to call them law-abiding citizens, and they’re just getting chastised because of their cultural background, and that’s wrong,” Ivey said.
Protests are already being planned for April 7, when the planning commission is set to take up CoreCivic’s special use permit application for the first time and make a recommendation about whether or not to grant it.
CoreCivic’s past performance
Months before the private prison was closed at the end of 2021, dangerous understaffing and the stockpiling of weapons and drugs within the facility prompted U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson to call CoreCivic’s prison “an absolute hell hole” during a sentencing hearing.
Attorneys representing inmates there said the facility’s culture of violence and inattentiveness led to two suicides and at least 10 severe beatings and stabbings in its final year of operation.
Gustin said focusing on those incidents would be “an unfair representation” of the company’s 40-year track record.
“Corrections and detentions as an industry is a challenging environment, and so there are going to be times when there are critical incidents that occur,” Gustin said.
“All our immigration facilities operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability. They adhere to all ICE standards and are monitored by ICE officials on a daily basis.”
The company operates 14 immigrant detention centers around the country, housing approximately 10,000 detainees with cases working their way through immigration court, he said.
“What we’ve found is that immigrant detention has been plagued with reports of abuse, medical neglect, use of force and abysmal conditions for people who are being held in immigration detention,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “Companies like CoreCivic that are ultimately accountable to their shareholders and their bottom line have every incentive to reduce the amount of money spent on things like medical care.”
Kansas City immigration attorney Michael Sharma-Crawford said the Chase County Jail, where immigrants apprehended by ICE in Kansas and Missouri have traditionally been held, is “a very accessible jail that allows due process to be met.” He worries a private detention center would be less accommodating.
“If I have somebody that has a removal order that’s from Mexico that gets picked up on a Monday, I’m staring at the possibility they could be on a plane by Friday,” he said.
“So if I think I have any shot at reopening that case because they didn’t get notice, because it wasn’t properly served because there’s a compelling reason for them to have status in the United States to keep a family together, I’ve got to fly. I’ve got to be able to get ahold of them. I’ve got to be able to talk to them.”
Between 2011 and 2013, more than 1,000 phone calls between inmates and their attorneys were improperly recorded at the private Leavenworth prison. A number of convictions were overturned after it was discovered that prosecutors listened to some of the recordings, and the company and its phone operator paid out $1.6 million to affected inmates and $3.7 million to their attorneys.
Officials insisted the private calls were recorded and turned over to prosecutors by accident. Gustin said CoreCivic takes great pains to ensure attorney-client calls and meetings are not improperly monitored at any of their facilities.
Inmates at the Leavenworth detention center would have daily access to phones and tablets for contacting loved ones and legal representation, as well as in-person visitation rooms, he said.
But in Sharma-Crawford’s opinion, the for-profit prison business model remains vulnerable to mismanagement and abuse that could deprive immigrant detainees of a fair chance to stay in their chosen country.
“It’s a business. It’s a commodity. It’s a U-Haul warehouse for human beings.”