Seemingly undeterred by legal setbacks, private prison company CoreCivic is on a hiring spree to staff a Leavenworth, Kansas, detention center that currently has no detainees.
It’s been two months since a Kansas court temporarily blocked the company from reopening the former private prison. The city of Leavenworth sought the order because CoreCivic has not obtained a special use permit — a requirement the company rejects.
There is no clear end in sight for those legal proceedings. Yet CoreCivic shows every sign that it intends to fulfill its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, to hold up to 1,000 federal detainees in Leavenworth.
Echoing the company’s rebrand from the Corrections Corporation of America in 2016, the sign in front of Leavenworth’s former maximum-security prison has been replaced. The complex of gray and beige blocks is now called the “Midwest Regional Reception Center,” or MRRC, which reflects its potential role as a central hub for President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts.
Besides the sign switch, CoreCivic has paid for roof repairs and run ads for jobs at the new facility. Job listings run the gamut from administrative clerk positions ($17.75 per hour) to a lead psychiatrist (up to $300,000 per year).
“I’m very confused by that,” said Leavenworth Mayor Holly Pittman after a court hearing related to the facility on Wednesday. “What are they paying them to do?”
Why is CoreCivic hiring?
In an email to the Kansas News Service, CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin said the company has hired 130 people so far, including 75 detention officers, at the MRRC.
That’s out of over 2,300 applicants, Gustin said. He expects the facility to employ 300 people once it’s fully operational.
Pay for correctional officers, which make up the lion’s share of the facility’s staff, starts at $28.25 per hour. The company is offering to pay a $3,000 signing bonus for those who are hired from August through October.
But until the legal battle between CoreCivic and the city of Leavenworth reaches a resolution, detention officers will not have any detainees to watch.
“Our hiring and training efforts continue at MRRC while we pursue all the avenues to find a successful conclusion to this matter,” Gustin said. “Doing so better prepares us to serve our government partners at ICE.”
Gustin said rank-and-file detention officers undergo 200 hours of training. He said CoreCivic will continue paying them post-training — even if there are no detainees at the MRRC.
Federal audits and former employees blamed understaffing and insufficient training for dire conditions at the facility in years past. Before, it housed pre-trial federal inmates for the U.S. Marshals Service, or USMS.
The former Leavenworth Detention Center shuttered at the end of 2021. An executive order by then-President Joe Biden caused many federal contracts with private prisons to expire.
For years, the facility had been mired in reports of mismanagement and abuse. Former staff and inmates said they saw preventable drug use, injury and death on a regular basis — problems exacerbated by chronic understaffing, according to a 2017 review by the U.S. Department of Justice.
Gustin said in a previous email to the Kansas News Service that most issues with safety and staffing were concentrated during an 18-month period coinciding with the pandemic.
Gustin said CoreCivic trains its employees at or above federal standards, though guidelines for ICE differ in some ways from those of the USMS.
The court of law
While activity flourishes at the facility, legal cases surrounding it slog through the courts.
The latest hearing was Aug. 6. CoreCivic’s attorneys asked Leavenworth County District Judge John Bryant to unblock the company from holding detainees in Leavenworth.
That would represent a reversal of a temporary injunction Bryant placed on the company less than a month prior. He did not make an immediate decision in the court hearing.
One possible sticking point: CoreCivic also plans to challenge Bryant’s block in the Kansas Court of Appeals. That could raise confusing questions of jurisdiction between the district and appellate courts.
Meanwhile, the company has filed a separate lawsuit against the city. It argues Leavenworth officials unlawfully revoked CoreCivic’s permission to use its facility as a prison. Bryant discussed combining the lawsuits for simplicity.
Joe Hatley, an attorney for the city of Leavenworth, said he expects the legal knot will take many months — and dollars — to untangle.
“Trials are expensive and lengthy and bothersome for everybody involved,” Hatley said in an interview.
CoreCivic revealed in legal filings that they miss out on $4.2 million every month that the courts keep them from fulfilling their contract with ICE. Hatley did not want to speculate as to why the company would continue setting up shop despite the legal uncertainty.
“If they want to spend money hiring people and doing all that, that's their money,” he said.
The court of public opinion
Even without substantial changes in the legal fight, attention has continued to snowball in the conflict between the historic prison town and a multi-billion dollar private prison corporation.
National outlets have sent correspondents to northeast Kansas to cover what is, legally speaking, a mundane dispute over local development regulations. Protests against CoreCivic draw crowds of 40 or 50, greater than when the controversy began this spring.
But some in the Leavenworth community have voiced support for CoreCivic reopening its steel doors. Republican state Rep. Pat Proctor, whose district overlaps with the city, said in an email that the MRRC would be part of a national immigration agenda he favors.
“CoreCivic’s new facility fulfills a critical need for detention space, as DHS struggles to manage a huge operation, deporting the millions of illegal immigrants that flooded our country through Joe Biden's open borders,” he said.
The company presents itself as an economic boon for Leavenworth. In addition to providing hundreds of jobs, the company said it will give the city a one-time impact payment of $1 million, $400,000 per year in recurring impact payments and over $1,000,000 in annual property taxes.
Proctor said his last hang-up was the possibility that the MRRC would poach staff from the nearby Lansing Correctional Facility. But in the latest state budget, the Kansas Legislature approved more than $4.1 million to cover a pay differential when the MRRC opens.
CoreCivic has also donated $10,000 each to local chapters of organizations like the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Salvation Army.
“Despite what politically extreme outsider groups are saying,” Warden Misty Mackey said in an April press release, “potential new employees and local business partners are excited to be part of what we’re creating in Leavenworth.”
While courts have momentarily foiled CoreCivic’s ambitions in Kansas, federal immigration authorities have been able to use a different facility down the road.
The lockup run by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, called FCI Leavenworth, has an agreement with ICE to detain immigrants. The American Civil Liberties Union said in May that those detainees are held in “crowded, unsanitary conditions” and that some have attempted suicide.
Since Trump took office in January, Leavenworth has landed in the middle of a national push for, and outcry against, the deportation of millions of people living in the country without full legal status.
Outside of the Leavenworth County District Court before an Aug. 6 hearing on the CoreCivic case, dozens of protesters heard speeches through tall black speakers.
A few passing cars honked in support. But during remarks by Anne Parelkar, a former immigration attorney who is now running as a Democrat for the U.S. Senate in Kansas, a goateed man stormed out of the courthouse.
“They’re here illegally,” he yelled.
A protester holding a sign that read “no human is illegal” tried to continue arguing with the man, but others dissuaded him.
“Not all of them,” Parelkar said to the man, and returned to her speech.
Zane Irwin reports on politics, campaigns and elections for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at zaneirwin@kcur.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished by news media at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
