Tennessee town considers deal to turn closed prison into immigration detention facility
The mayor and the Board of Alderman in Mason are set to discuss a deal that would convert the closed West Tennessee Detention Facility into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center run by CoreCivic Inc. The sole items on the meeting's agenda are votes to approve contracts between Mason and ICE and CoreCivic.
Board member Virginia Rivers said she had not received the contracts as of the afternoon. Rivers said she does not support turning the prison into an ICE facility because 'I don't like what ICE stands for, how they treat the people.'
The American Civil Liberties Union said Monday that it had 'serious concerns about transparency and accountability in the decision-making process.'
Rivers said citizens should be allowed to gather at a public meeting to ask questions and 'have a say about what is coming to their town.'
The 600-bed West Tennessee Detention Facility has been closed since 2021, after President Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with private detention facilities. In January, President Donald Trump reversed Biden's order.
CoreCivic said in a statement that the ICE facility would create nearly 240 new jobs with benefits such as medical insurance and a tuition assistance scholarship fund. CoreCivic is currently advertising openings there including for detention officers, at a pay rate of $26.50 per hour.
The facility would also generate about $325,000 in annual property tax revenue and $200,000 for Mason that could be used for schools, infrastructure improvements and other projects, the company said.
'The services we provide help the government solve problems in ways it could not do alone — to help create safer communities by assisting with the current immigration challenges, dramatically improve the standard of care for vulnerable people, and meet other critical needs efficiently and innovatively,' CoreCivic said.
Tennessee's corrections agency has fined CoreCivic $44.7 million across four prisons from 2022 through February, including for understaffing violations. Records obtained by The Associated Press also show the company has spent more than $4.4 million to settle about 80 lawsuits and out-of-court complaints alleging mistreatment — including at least 22 inmate deaths — at four Tennessee prisons and two jails from 2016 through September 2024.
The state comptroller released scathing audits in 2017, 2020 and 2023.
The Brentwood, Tennessee-based company has defended itself by pointing to industrywide problems with hiring and keeping workers. CoreCivic has said it offers hiring incentives and strategically backfills with workers from other facilities nationally.
With a population of about 1,300, Mason is located in Tipton County, about 40 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Memphis. When it was open, the prison was town's largest employer and an important economic engine.
In July, Florida opened an immigration detention facility at an isolated airfield in the Everglades dubbed ' Alligator Alcatraz.' Civil rights advocates and environmental groups have filed lawsuits against the facility, where detainees allege that they have been forced to go without adequate food and medical care, barred from meeting with their attorneys, held without any charges and unable to get a federal immigration court to hear their cases.
Trump has touted the facility's harshness and remoteness as fit for the 'worst of the worst,' while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said it can serve as a model for other state-run immigration holding facilities.
The administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has said it is preparing to build a second detention center at a Florida National Guard training center in the northern part of the state.
___
Associated Press writer Jonathan Mattise contributed from Nashville, Tennessee.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Toronto Star
24 minutes ago
- Toronto Star
Colombians bid farewell to presidential hopeful Uribe after shooting at political rally
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombians on Wednesday bid farewell to senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay, who died more than two months after being shot during a political rally in the South American country's capital. Family, friends, members of Congress and a delegation of government officials from the United States honored Uribe, whose coffin was draped with Colombia's flag. The 39-year-old died Monday in the hospital where he had been since the June 7 shooting. Thousands of mourners paid their respects Tuesday.
Winnipeg Free Press
24 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Colombians bid farewell to presidential hopeful Uribe after shooting at political rally
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombians on Wednesday bid farewell to senator and presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe Turbay, who died more than two months after being shot during a political rally in the South American country's capital. Family, friends, members of Congress and a delegation of government officials from the United States honored Uribe, whose coffin was draped with Colombia's flag. The 39-year-old died Monday in the hospital where he had been since the June 7 shooting. Thousands of mourners paid their respects Tuesday. 'The bullets that took his life not only broke the hearts of his family, they reopened the fractures of a country that has yet to find peace,' Senate President Lidio García said, referring to Colombia's long history of violence against politicians. Uribe had become one of the strongest critics of Colombia's current government. In October, he joined the list of politicians seeking to replace Gustavo Petro, the first leftist to govern Colombia, in the May 2026 elections. Uribe was shot three times, twice in the head, while giving a campaign speech in a park in a working-class Bogota neighborhood. Authorities have arrested six people, including the teenager they say shot him, but they have not determined who ordered the attack or why. The shooting, caught on multiple videos, alarmed Colombians who have not seen this kind of political violence against presidential candidates since Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar declared war on the state in the 1990s. Uribe's mother, well-known journalist Diana Turbay, was among the victims in that period. She died during a police rescue after being kidnapped by a group of drug traffickers led by Escobar seeking to block their extradition to the U.S. 'If my mother was willing to give her life for a cause, how could I not do the same in life and in politics?' Uribe, who was 5 when his mother was killed, said in an interview with a Colombian news outlet last year. The senator's family said he would be buried Wednesday at Bogota's Central Cemetery. The cemetery is the oldest in the city and the final resting place of figures such as Liberal leader Luis Carlos Galán, who was shot dead in 1989 while giving a presidential campaign speech in Bogota.
Toronto Star
an hour ago
- Toronto Star
US sanctions Mexican drug cartel associates accused of scamming elderly Americans
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than a dozen Mexican companies and four people it says worked with a powerful drug trafficking cartel to scam elderly Americans in a multimillion-dollar timeshare fraud. The network of 13 businesses in areas near the seaside tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta were accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a group designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.
