Leavenworth’s new plan to block troubled private prison from becoming ICE detention
The city of Leavenworth has a new plan for preventing CoreCivic from housing immigrant detainees at its maximum-security facility as soon as next week.
A day after U.S. District Court Judge Toby Crouse dismissed the federal lawsuit for lack of standing, city attorneys filed a complaint in Leavenworth County District Court Friday and requested a restraining order against the for-profit prison.
The city accuses CoreCivic of gross mismanagement before the facility’s closure in 2021, including failure to report crimes and at least one inmate death for days, repeatedly stonewalling police investigating reported sexual assaults and other serious allegations, and destroying evidence.
The lawsuit seeks to block detentions at the facility immediately and to prevent CoreCivic from making good on its contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, unless it first requests and receives the zoning permit required under local law.
“It’s disappointing that Leavenworth has chosen to continue litigating this issue,” CoreCivic Public Affairs Director Ryan Gustin told The Star in an email.
“The city’s taxpayers shouldn’t have to fund a misguided legal strategy against a project that would create 300 jobs, generate millions for Leavenworth and help address one of our country’s most urgent challenges.”
Prison officials told The Star in March that the detention center can accommodate as many as 1,033 inmates, and that the imposing concrete facility hasn’t undergone any structural changes since being closed more than three years ago.
City attorneys argue the special use permit that CoreCivic refuses to apply for is the only mechanism the city has at its disposal to ensure conditions inside a reopened detention center would be safer than before.
Special use permits can be awarded after a series of meetings where members of the public are allowed to weigh in on the proposal.
If the company had not withdrawn the permit application it filed in February, city commissioners were scheduled to make a final decision on May 27. Instead, the zoning dispute will be settled in court.
City attorneys accuse CoreCivic of breaking a state law that makes it a misdemeanor to violate municipal zoning laws, punishable by up to $500 or six months in prison for each offense.
Dangerous prison conditions
Leavenworth’s complaint opens with an extended quote from U.S. District Court Judge Julie A. Robinson, who in September 2021 called CoreCivic’s detention center “an absolute hell hole.”
It notes that in the years before the facility was shuttered under an order from then-President Joe Biden, CoreCivic was “embroiled in multiple widely publicized scandals resulting from its gross mismanagement of the Facility and the ensuing rampant abuse, violence, and violations of the constitutional rights of its detainees and staff.”
In November 2018, the suit alleges, CoreCivic failed to report an in-custody death to law enforcement for six days.
The city also claims CoreCivic prohibited its employees who were victims of crimes from sitting for interviews with police while they were supposed to be on-duty. Instead, it says, victims were forced to provide written statements to investigators through the prison fence and follow up on their own time.
“Officers were granted no access to other third-party witnesses to crimes, regardless of how critical their testimony may have been to a potential prosecution,” the suit states.
At times, the obstructionist approach was taken to extremes, the complaint alleges, including when prison staff and inmates were instructed to clean up crime scenes before police arrived.
The complaint cites previous judgments against CoreCivic, including those stemming from a scandal over improper recordings of attorney-client conversations.
Between 2011 and 2013, more than 1,000 phone calls between inmates and their attorneys were recorded at the private Leavenworth prison without consent. A number of convictions were overturned after it was discovered that prosecutors listened to some of the recordings, and the company and its phone operator paid out $1.6 million to affected inmates and $3.7 million to their attorneys.
“In addition to the unquantifiable harm caused by CoreCivic’s mismanagement, its problems also extended tangibly and directly to the pocketbooks of City taxpayers,” the suit states.
On multiple occasions, malfunctions with a grinder pump on the prison property caused large pieces of debris including bed sheets and rags to be released into the city’s sewer system, leading to major downstream clogs and requiring costly emergency repairs, the complaint claims.
CoreCivic has said reopening its rebranded Midwest Regional Reception Center would generate upwards of $2 million a year for Leavenworth between fees paid to local government, agreements with law enforcement to support the facility and property taxes that are already being paid.
In an earnings call earlier this month, CoreCivic CEO Patrick Swindle highlighted the company’s March 7 agreement with ICE over management of immigrant detention in Leavenworth.
That contract has not been made public, and ICE has so far not provided a copy in response to The Star’s Freedom of Information Act request.
The city and company reached an agreement in April that CoreCivic would not begin housing detainees in Leavenworth until after June 1.
CoreCivic officials did not respond to an inquiry about when the company plans to begin operating its facility as an ICE detention center.
According to Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, a Kansas City area immigrants rights group, 80 immigrants rounded up by federal authorities are already being held in FCI Leavenworth, a separate federal prison in the city.
This story was originally published May 28, 2025 at 1:44 PM.
