By Morgan Chilson, Kansas Reflector
LEAVENWORTH — CoreCivic is a step closer to reopening its private prison in Leavenworth as a lucrative immigration detention center after the city planning commission approved a special use permit over objections from local advocates.
A four-hour planning commission meeting on Monday included input from advocates on both sides of the issue, ejection of a long-time community teacher after he yelled about free speech and police escorts for CoreCivic officials when they went to the restroom.
Approval, with one no vote from board chairman Ken Bateman, came after the planning commission made changes in the permit originally recommended by city staff, including questioning CoreCivic officials in attendance about their processes.
The permit will now move to the Leavenworth City Commission for a vote.
Changes Monday included decreasing the initial renewal period to three years from five and decreasing the timeframe period the city is required to give written notice to enter the property for inspections.
Before voting, Bateman and board member Mark Preisinger directed sharp comments to CoreCivic officials on the first row.
“The argument we are hearing from CoreCivic, and I think it’s worth hearing, is we’ve changed our ways and let us come back and everything will be great,” Bateman said. “I’ve lived life and I know a lot of relationships where that’s been the case, and it doesn’t really change a lot.”
He later added, “If we have a brand world-wide, it’s corrections. So we want it to be done excellently, and it has not been done excellently in the past. That really is the root of a lot of the frustration that you hear tonight. ”
Preisinger told CoreCivic that they squandered their community goodwill by taking the city to court to attempt to avoid the permitting process. He also said he’s disappointed by a state politician from Leavenworth who “politicized this event so much, put out so many falsehoods and lies about this entire process from different sides.”
He presumably referred to Rep. Pat Proctor, a Republican who was vocal about his opinion that the city’s fight with CoreCivic was about social justice issues regarding immigration rather than a a local permitting process.
Committee members questioned CoreCivic about issues that stemmed from past problems, including ensuring Leavenworth police would have access to the facility to investigate crimes and that proper equipment was in place for sewage challenges that had affected the city’s water system.
The permit was put together following 16 “golden rules” that have been used in court to outline whether a project is appropriate for a community, city manager Scott Peterson told the committee. Those rules include consideration of the neighborhood’s character, what the land was used for in the past and the extent the permit would affect surrounding properties, he said.
Peterson walked the committee through a detailed history of the city and CoreCivic’s relationship, including recent court cases, and then through the staff’s recommendations to address each of the golden rules.
About 30 people commented during the public hearing, most opposing the permit. However, some people talked about positive experiences working for CoreCivic currently and how important the good salary and benefits were to their family.
Before the public hearing began, which were limited to three minutes, Bateman warned everyone to stick to comments on the special use permit and avoid discussing immigration or U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One woman who did not abide by that rule and who refused to stop speaking was approached by police officers to get her to leave the podium.
It was also that rule that incited Ken Church, a speech teacher in Leavenworth for more than 30 years, to shout out, “Let him speak” when a speaker tried to discuss ICE tactics and was cut short by Bateman.
Church was escorted out by a police officer who was a former student.
Outside the meeting room, Church said not being allowed to talk about ICE was like talking about babies without mentioning the mom or dad.
“The two are hand-in-hand here,” he said. “You don’t shut people down, especially when you’re an elected official.”
Church pointed to a Cato Institute report that talked about the billions of dollars being spent to fund immigration enforcement and how that money could be better spent on education.
Many of the public comments opposing the special permit focused on CoreCivic’s past behaviors, which were castigated in 2021 by a district court judge as creating a “hell hole”in the company’s Leavenworth facility.
Several referenced problems in other CoreCivic-owned facilities, such as Tennessee, where the state has fined the company $44.78 million since 2022 for contractual shortfalls that include understaffing issues, according to Reflector sibling publication the Tennessee Lookout. Reports also found that one Tennessee facility had a 146% staff turnover rate.
CoreCivic officials at the meeting told the committee that understaffing at the Leavenworth facility was an issue during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they are confident from applications received that they will be fully staffed to about 300 people in Leavenworth.
“I can go back to the last few years of the facility that was operating during COVID,” said John Malloy, a company lobbyist and spokesman. “We had lost a contract, and with that uncertainty, it was very hard to staff.”
He said the company requested a five-year permit so staff would be confident they would have a job. In addition, they have addressed understaffing issues by increasing salaries, Malloy said.
“The city has lots of power to pull the SUP if we’re not doing what we’re supposed to be doing,” Malloy said.
Although told not to discuss ICE, several speakers brought up the government agency’s connection to CoreCivic’s plan to operate its Midwest Regional Reception Center as an ICE facility.
“We were told at the beginning that CoreCivic is not ICE,” said Michelle Gregor Mendiola. “However, the European concentration camps in the 1930s and 40s, they weren’t necessarily SS facilities. They were government facilities that were run by the SS. So my question is, how much influence will ICE have in our community, in this facility, whether it be a detention facility or corrections facility or a prison.”
Those in favor of CoreCivic also broke with the decorum Bateman asked from the audience. When a speaker led the room in saying the Pledge of Allegiance, an elderly man added “except immigrants” to the end that said “with liberty and justice for all.”
The special use permit will move to the Leavenworth City Commission for approval, and aother public hearing will be scheduled, said Melissa Bower, city spokeswoman.
Although not “technically” scheduled, staff are planning for the permit to be an agenda item on the commission’s Feb. 24 meeting as a first consideration, she said. There will be a second consideration, likely in March, Bower said.
