Marina S. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Kansas–

The city of Leavenworth, Kansas has become an unlikely center of activity in the ongoing struggle against the unprecedented fascist violence perpetrated by ICE under the Trump regime. Back in Feb. 2025, it was reported that CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, was quietly attempting to negotiate with Leavenworth city officials for a special use permit to reopen its long-inactive prison facility as a concentration camp to imprison undocumented immigrants apprehended by ICE. 

Leavenworth is of course no stranger to the American incarceration machine. The city is home to four prisons including the notorious Federal prison where Leonard Peltier was incarcerated from 1985 to 2005. However, the CoreCivic facility, currently called the Midwest Regional Reception Center, is particularly notorious in the area.

First opened in 1992 as the Leavenworth Detention Center, the prison originally was constructed with 460 beds, but was expanded four times by May 2008 reaching a maximum capacity of 1,126 inmates. In late 2021, following an executive order of the Biden administration to not renew contracts with private prisons, ACLU affiliates in the states of Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska sent a letter to the White House Domestic Policy Office and the Leavenworth County Commission detailing the abhorrent conditions present in the facility and calling on the center to be closed.

“CoreCivic Leavenworth is dangerously understaffed, poorly managed, and incapable of safely housing its detainee population,” the letter reads. “Stabbings, suicides, and even homicide have occurred with alarming frequency in the last year, with weapons, drugs, and other contraband now a common occurrence. Amidst all the violence, basic human needs are not being met: food has been restricted, contact with legal counsel and family denied or curtailed, medical care is limited, and showers are infrequent because the facility is too unsafe.” Spokespersons for CoreCivic of course denied these allegations and fought to keep the center open, but their contract was allowed to expire in Dec. 2021 without renewal and was closed shortly after. It remains unopened at time of writing.

This of course was not the end of the story. 

In Dec. 2024, documents obtained by the ACLU revealed that the Midwest Regional Reception Center was one of many sites submitted in response to ICE requests for contracts to expand immigration detention facilities. CoreCivic seems to have recognized a lucrative opportunity for exploitation in the Trump regime’s increasing violence against the immigrant community. In that same month, CoreCivic donated $500,000 to the Trump Vance Inaugural Committee and it is clear that it is expecting a large return on this investment. In 2021, CoreCivic grossed $552 million from its ICE Contracts alone. In 2022, ICE contracts accounted for 30% of the company’s total revenue.

And yet, there is anticipation from CoreCivic’s leadership of even more profit to be extracted under the current regime. In a quarterly earnings call with investors last November, CEO Damon Hininger breathlessly told investors that it was rapidly preparing the 18,000 vacant beds in CoreCivic facilities to meet the “need” created by increased ICE raids. Additionally, Hininger plans on mobilizing CoreCivic’s wholly-owned prisoner transport subsidiary TransCor to meet ICE demand. 

However the planned expansion in Leavenworth ran almost immediately into backlash from the local community. This seemed surprising to some observers given the city’s reputation as a prison community and its history as a stronghold for Trump support in Kansas. A campaign organized by Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation (AIRR) mobilized volunteers to put pressure on Kansas officials to resist the presence and expansion of ICE operations in the state. These efforts were also supported by local residents including several former employees at the Leavenworth Detention Center.

Within two weeks of submitting its application for a special use permit to reopen the Leavenworth facility, CoreCivic withdrew the request. It soon became clear that they intended to move ahead with reopening the detention center in defiance of the wishes of the local community, prompting a lawsuit initiated by the city and a court order halting the reopening of the facility on June 4, 2025. 

But the most inspiring and determined resistance to the expansion of ICE detention in Leavenworth has unsurprisingly continued to come from the people. On June 14, 2025, organizers and community members from across the Kansas City metro area, including members of the American Party of Labor, staged a demonstration outside the shuttered prison and voiced their collective outrage at the attempts to open an immigrant detention facility, and their opposition either to justice-for-sale, or the infant genocide being waged against multiple migrant communities.

As of right now, the situation remains precarious. CoreCivic is showing no sign of backing down in its attempts to expand its lucrative exploitation of the Trump regime’s fascistic violence against immigrants. It is clear that the struggle against the opening of the detention facility will be a long and protracted one. But it is equally clear that the working and freedom-loving people of the Kansas City area are resolute and more than equal to the task ahead of them. They will continue to wage that struggle until the threat of ICE incursion into their communities is defeated.

Categories: Government, Immigration, Prisons, U.S. News