Government reopens discredited private prisons to fill them with migrants detained by ICE

Government reopens discredited private prisons to fill them with migrants detained by ICE

In 1931, the city of Leavenworth, Kansas, welcomed one of the most notorious prisoners of the era: Al Capone. The gangsters George “Machine Gun” Kelly and James Earl Ray, who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr., were other infamous inmates who did time behind bars there. Now, the city is involved in a lawsuit over the Midwest Regional Reception Center (MRRC), which is preparing to house a different type of inmate: migrants detained by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). MRRC is one of the private penitentiaries that, despite a history marked by complaints about the conditions in which it held prisoners, has reopened its doors to meet the needs of Donald Trump’s anti-immigration campaign. ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” to secure thousands of beds to deal with the mass detentions demanded by the Republican administration in its drive to carry out the largest deportation in U.S. history. The administration has 41,000 detention beds and aims to expand that number to at least 100,000, perhaps 150,000.

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