Judge blocks private prison operator from housing ICE detainees at shuttered Kansas center

LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — A judge on Wednesday barred a major U.S. private prison operator from housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered Kansas City area detention center unless it can get a permit from frustrated city officials.

Leavenworth County Judge John Bryant agreed after a packed hearing to grant the city of Leavenworth’s request for a temporary restraining order against CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison operators.

CoreCivic had claimed in legal filings that halting the opening of the 1,033-bed facility on the northwest outskirts of the Kansas City area would cost it $4.2 million in revenue each month. City officials said they anticipated the arrival of detainees apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was imminent under a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration.

Leavenworth isn’t the first city where controversy has surrounded the reopening of a private prison as an ICE detention facility. In Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka sued the state’s top federal prosecutor on Tuesday over his recent arrest on a trespassing charge at a federal immigration detention facility in that state, saying the Trump-appointed attorney had pursued the case out of political spite.

Scott Peterson, the city manager for Leavenworth, said he didn’t know if the case in Kansas marked the first time a municipality had prevailed in court.

“I would point out that maybe the reason we have seen some success here today is this is not about immigration,” Peterson said. “This is not about private prisons. This is about land use.”

In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Leavenworth facility after then-President Joe Biden called on the Justice Department to curb the use of private prisons. In the months leading up to the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders urged the White House to speed up the closure, citing inmate rights violations there along with stabbings, suicides and even one homicide.

But with President Donald Trump pushing for mass deportations under a wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, the facility that CoreCivic now calls the Midwest Regional Reception Center is in demand again. It is located just 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of the Kansas City International Airport. As part of his crackdown, Trump has vowed to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from the budgeted 41,000 beds this year.

Tennessee-based CoreCivic initially applied for a special use permit from the city in February but then withdrew that application the next month, arguing in court filings that it didn’t need the permit and that the process would take too long.

“It became clear to CoreCivic that there was not a cooperative relationship,” said Taylor Concannon Hausmann, an attorney for the private prison operator, speaking in court.

The city sued CoreCivic, the lawsuit claiming that CoreCivic impeded the city police force’s ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent crimes. The lawsuit contended that the permitting process was needed to safeguard itself from future problems.

“Just follow our rules,” an attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said in court. “Go get a permit.”

The first version of the lawsuit, filed in March in federal court, was tossed out in May on technical grounds. But Bryant sided with Hatley in the case refiled the same month in state court, finding that the proper procedures weren’t followed.

Concannon Hausmann, CoreCivic’s attorney, declined to comment as the crowd filtered out of the courtroom Wednesday. Norman Mallicoat held a sign reading, “CoreCivic Doesn’t Run Leavenworth” as he left.

“I see this as basically a large company trying to bully a small city into getting what it wants and not having to follow the rules and ordinances of the city,” Mallicoat said.