Marcia Levering
nearly died at work on February 6, 2021. She was working as a prison guard at the former medium-security federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, a facility operated by the private prison company CoreCivic. One of Levering’s overwhelmed colleagues buzzed open the wrong door, releasing a high-risk prisoner directly into Levering’s path. “He kind of gave me this eerie green grin,” she said. Then boiling water hit her face.
The facility, which had long been plagued by overcrowding, chronic understaffing, and deadly violence, closed later that year after a Biden executive order against all private prison profiteering put its century-long run to an end.
Then came the second Trump administration and its plans to supercharge the business of incarceration in the United States.
As of March, the notorious prison is back up and running, and this time it’s being filled with immigrants, the majority of whom
have no criminal conviction
, as part of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s brutal deportation regime targeting noncitizens.
Last month, CoreCivic
sold the facility
to the Department of Homeland Security for $238.4 million, although it expects to keep operating the site under its existing ICE arrangement. But local officials tell the story of a massive for-profit prison company steamrolling community opposition as well as the city’s own established processes, and ultimately forcing their hand to participate in a project of mass detention — a system that advocates and former employees say has led to unsafe, violent conditions for both detainees and employees.
Current conditions for detainees held at the Midwest Regional Reception Center are hard to verify from outside. In its reporting on the sale, the
Kansas City Star
put the facility’s population at 365 men and 112 women, a count shared at a July 28 community advisory board meeting. The paper described two local groups in contact with detainees and their families, among them Northland Neigh
