Fearing ‘suffering’ in Leavenworth, protesters vow to keep fighting ICE facility
Ben Pickman spoke directly to elected officials Tuesday as he urged them to vote no on a measure to allow a CoreCivic private prison to reopen as an immigration detention center.
“I will ask you to please not vote out of fear or out of the concern of the city’s wallet,” he said. “Just vote with human compassion.”
Only one of the five officials voted no.
Hundreds of anti-ICE protesters gathered under a replica of the Statue of Liberty as the Leavenworth City Commission gave permission for private prison company CoreCivic to reopen its Kansas facility as an immigration detention center. At least two demonstrators were arrested during the tense night.
Pickman, a Leavenworth resident, has a young daughter the same age as children held at CoreCivic’s Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. The facility has come under scrutiny for detaining thousands of minors in what has been described as inhumane conditions.
Despite CoreCivic’s promises that the reopened Leavenworth center would be more dignified, Pickman does not believe it.
“Every other location that they own is the same story. … They’re built to prosper off of suffering.”
‘A rough night’
Pickman said he was glad people from Lawrence, Johnson County and Kansas City joined in the protest.
“It’s been really great for me as a local resident, just to see the amount of support, because it did feel at some points like we are by ourselves.”
Amy Helmer is one of those regional residents, who drove 50 minutes from south Lawrence for the vote. They described Tuesday as “a rough night.”
Helmer got involved with stopping the ICE facility when their fellow Lawrence residents were detained by ICE.
Only a fraction of the more than 370 protesters were allowed inside Leavenworth City Hall, where opponents of the facility packed the commission chamber and the lobby overflow room.
This meant the dozens of demonstrators who signed up to give their public comment had to wait outside City Hall. Helmer and their fellow volunteers ran back and forth with a “little megaphone,” to tell speakers when they could enter the building.
Helmer said they will make the 50-minute drive to Leavenworth again, especially for future detainments.
“I’m sure a bunch of us will be back out here, as our neighbors end up here regrettably.”
‘Designed to cage and disappear us’
Yazmin, a Wyandotte County resident who described herself as “undocumented and unafraid,” told a crowd of supporters that reopening the Leavenworth ICE detention center will be “an absolute death threat” to her community. Yazmin asked that her last name not be published.
“It would mean families like mine would live every day knowing that just down the road is a place designed to cage and disappear us,” she said.
In her John Brown shirt and Ruth Bader Ginsburg pin, Gwyndolyn Jones said she felt hopeless after the vote and was committed to continue protesting.
“If the city is not going to listen to its own residents, what other choice do we have?” the fourth-generation Leavenworth resident said.
Even, she said, “if I need to build a secret room in the basement where a bunch of people can live when they need to.”
Karla Juarez, executive director of Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation, said the three-year fight against the facility was not in vain, because of the connections formed between advocates.
“We still have a constitution, we still have rights,” she said. “And under our watch, those rights will not be violated.”
