LEAVENWORTH, Kan. — A controversial immigration detention center appears to be coming to Leavenworth.
The approval comes in the form of a special use permit (SUP) for CoreCivic.The corporation’s going to reopen its closed private prison for immigration enforcement. The troubled prison shut down four years ago.
The meeting started at 6 p.m. and ended around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. After a 4-1 vote approving the SUP that night, a number of people came outside upset with the commission vote.
Protesters tried yelling at a handful of CoreCivic employees as they left City Hall.
Before the vote and inside the building, Commissioners Joe Wilson and Holly Pittman both said that if they didn’t vote yes, the city could get entangled in more lawsuits that could put the city’s finances at risk. Then, two people had to be removed who were upset at the commissioner’s comments. They were also upset with CoreCivic.
“They won’t answer to you. They won’t let you visit. It will be your fault when people die at this facility,” one protester said as Leavenworth Police Officers escorted him out. “The time is not a year from now. It’s right now. Detention without due process is a concentration camp.”
Another person had to be removed too. Police Chief Pat Kitchens threatened to remove everyone from the commission chambers right before the vote because it started to get unruly.
The vote ended up being the exact same as it was February 24th when commissioners first read this ordinance.
Wilson and Pittman voted yes, so did Mayor Nancy Bauder and Commissioner Samuel Maxwell.
The only person to vote no was Mayor Pro Tem Rebecca Hollister. She wanted the SUP to be two years instead of three. Regardless of the financial concerns Wilson and Pittman brought up, one of the people outside thought that that was just a poor excuse.
“CoreCivic was already taking money from the city through current legal battles, so I mean they cost the city like over $700,000,” Leavenworth resident Ben Pickman said in an interview after the vote. “Who’s to say once CoreCivic gets in this unit, they just sell the building off to DHS [Department of Homeland Security], and the city has no power anymore.”
City Manager Scott Peterson said that city leaders basically have added 17 stipulations to the ordinance to try to improve the corporation’s relationship with the people of the city. The prison needs to get accreditation and a Community Relations Board needs to be set up. Those were two of the stipulations.
The 20-acre property will operate as the Midwest Regional Reception Center. It’ll employ about 300 full-time workers. One of the other stipulations Peterson talked about was that the staffing levels should not drop below 80 percent. The city will also require CoreCivic to send their roster over to them.
Peterson was supposed to talk to reporters after the meeting, but Chief Kitchens wanted City Hall evacuated because things were starting to get chaotic outside.
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The city did not comment Tuesday evening, nor did CoreCivic’s employees there. There’s no word when the facility could open back up.
Bauder allowed for an hours’ worth of public comment before the commission voted. The people that signed up were allowed to speak for three minutes at most. About 35 people spoke.
More than 30 of those people wanted the commission to vote no. They weren’t all from the city though. Just three of them wanted the commission to vote yes. All three people who spoke in favor of the SUP wanted to be employed at the facility.
