Judge blocks private prison operator from housing ICE detainees at
shuttered Kansas center
[June 05, 2025]
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
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.
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A judge has halted CoreCivic, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, from
housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered
facility that the private prison operator now calls the Midwest
Regional Reception Center, in Leavenworth, Kan., pictured Monday,
March 3, 2025, unless it can get a permit from frustrated city
officials. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)
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.
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