Leavenworth sues to keep CoreCivic from reopening Kansas prison as ICE detention facility
CoreCivic plans to reopen its Leavenworth facility, closed since 2021, as an ICE detention facility. City officials have sued. (Morgan Chilson/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — The city of Leavenworth and CoreCivic will take their fight to court June 9 to determine whether the company can reopen its prison facility as an ICE detention center without going through a permitting process.
Attorneys for Leavenworth filed suit in March in U.S. District Court against the Nashville-based company, which ran the Leavenworth Detention Center before it was closed in 2021.
CoreCivic announced its intent to reopen its prison facility as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, which would be named the Midwest Regional Reception Center.
In its initial filing, city attorneys said CoreCivic must apply for and receive a supplemental use permit to reopen and operate the prison.
'Our facility – which has been in Leavenworth since 1992 – is and always has been properly zoned,' said CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin in an email. 'Leavenworth's city code designates our site as an existing special use and lawful conforming use.'
The city recently passed a resolution that indicated CoreCivic needed permission to open its facility, Gustin said.
'There's nothing in Leavenworth's code that allows for such a resolution to rescind zoning,' he said.
City officials do not agree. In a 211-page filing with attachments, their attorneys said that, while the lawsuit is about the need for proper permitting, there were other problems too.
From 1992 to 2021, when CoreCivic operated the detention center, the company 'became embroiled in multiple widely publicized scandals resulting from its gross mismanagement of the Facility and the ensuing rampant abuse, violence, and violations of the constitutional rights of its detainees and staff,' the filing said.
'CoreCivic's mismanagement directly and indirectly impacted the City in countless ways, including for example, by imposing unexpected maintenance costs on its taxpayers, unreasonably increasing the burden on the City's police and law enforcement agencies to address violent crime, and even impeding the City's investigation of sexual assaults and other violent crimes against detainees and staff,' the filing said.
The city's lawsuit contends that CoreCivic was already operating the prison when the city enacted its development rules that require a permit, so the business was grandfathered in under the new rules. But by ceasing operations for three years, the filing said, CoreCivic must now apply for the special use permit.
In fact, CoreCivic applied for a special use permit in February 2025 but about three weeks later withdrew that application, the city's filing said.
Community activists are speaking about against the idea of CoreCivic operating a prison in Leavenworth.
Former CoreCivic employees regularly speak at city and county meetings about their negative experiences working in the closed detention center, and state organizations including the Kansas ACLU have helped organize press conferences and rallies. Objections include how CoreCivic operates, whether people held at the facility will be released into the community, and general opposition to immigrant detention centers.
Gustin said the company, as of April 30, had received applications from more than 1,100 people who want to work at the site.
'Despite what politically extreme outsider groups are saying, potential new employees and local business partners are excited to be part of what we're creating in Leavenworth,' said Misty Mackey, warden of the new facility, in a press release. 'We're looking forward to operating a safe, transparent, accountable facility that will be a positive for this community dedicated to public service.'
Gustin said there has been inaccurate reporting about employees working on a job at the prison to replace the facility's roof. CoreCivic issued cease-and-desist letters to those who accused the roofing company, Bass Roofing and Restoration, Fort Worth, of hiring workers without the proper permits.
'Any claims that our company has a contractor working for us at our Leavenworth facility that has undocumented or unauthorized workers doing the work are completely false,' he said. 'We have been furnished documentation of the legal status of all workers on the roofing project at our facility from the primary contractor and subcontractor.'
The company has said that it will use local contractors at the facility, and Gustin said CoreCivic did reach out to local vendors.
'Experience in roofing our facilities and experience working on our federally contracted facilities is a factor we evaluate in reviewing bids,' he said. 'It's important to note that the roofing contractor who was selected for this project has handled similar work at another of our federal facilities, which required special clearances for workers.'
Although aware of community disagreement about the facility, Gustin said CoreCivic wants to work with Leavenworth city and county officials.
'In addition to the impact fees we've agreed to pay – and the property tax we already pay – we've worked to both listen to and be transparent with the community,' he said.
CoreCivic has offered the following impact fees:
One-time impact fee of $1,000,000 to the city of Leavenworth
Annual impact fee of $250,000 to the city of Leavenworth
Additional $150,000 annually to the police department
Gustin said no one detained at the facility will be released directly into the Leavenworth community, which is one opposition point.
'Our facility will operate with strong oversight and accountability from our government partners, including regular audits and onsite monitors,' he said.
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Miami Herald
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28 minutes ago
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Telegram Messenger's Ties to Russia's FSB Revealed in New Report
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The Telegram messaging app may have ties to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), according to an investigation. Independent Russian investigative outlet IStories said it has uncovered evidence suggesting that the platform's server infrastructure is maintained by companies who have collaborated with Russian intelligence services, raising significant concerns about potential government surveillance. Responding to a request for comment, Telegram's head of Press and Media Relations Remi Vaughn said in a statement to Newsweek: "As a global company, Telegram has contracts with dozens of different service providers around the world. However, none of these service providers have access to Telegram data or sensitive infrastructure. "All Telegram servers belong to Telegram and are maintained by Telegram employees. Unauthorized access is impossible. Throughout its entire history, Telegram never disclosed any private messages to a third party — and its encryption has never been breached." In another auto-message sent after reaching out for comment, Telegram said: "Telegram is committed to protecting user privacy and human rights such as freedom of speech and assembly. It has played a prominent role in pro-democracy movements around the world, including in Iran, Russia, Belarus, Myanmar and Hong Kong. "Pavel Durov is the founder, owner and CEO of Telegram. He left Russia in 2014, after losing control of his previous company for refusing to hand over the data of Ukrainian protesters to security agencies. Pavel Durov lives in Dubai and holds a dual citizenship of the United Arab Emirates and France." 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Many of these IP addresses were previously owned by Globalnet, a St. Petersburg-based telecommunications operator. IStories reported that Globalnet has connections to the Kremlin and Russian intelligence services, including the FSB. Electrontelecom, a St. Petersburg-based company, also reportedly provided Telegram with another 5,000 IP addresses, according to IStories, which identified the firm as an FSB contractor. Electrontelecom has provided services for the installation and maintenance of "a complex system for transmitting classified information from fixed facilities operated by the FSB's Directorate for St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region, which is used to carry out operational investigative activities," it said. The investigation comes days after Russian human rights NGO First Department warned that the FSB had gained access to Russians' communication with Ukrainian Telegram channels, which provide vital updates and reporting on Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. "We know that by the time the defendants in cases of 'state treason' are detained, the FSB is already in possession of their correspondence. And the fact that neither defendants nor a lawyer are named in the main case allows the FSB to hide how exactly it goes about gaining access to that correspondence," First Department said. First Department head Dmitry Zair-Bek said that material from Telegram had already been used as evidence in "a significant number of cases." "On most cases, they have been accessed due to compromised devices. ... However, there are also cases in which no credible technical explanations consistent with known access methods can be identified," he said, Novaya Gazeta reported. "This could indicate either the use of undisclosed cyber espionage tools or Telegram's cooperation with the Russian authorities, obvious signs of which we see in a number of other areas," Zair-Bek added. What People Are Saying Cybersecurity expert Michał Woźniak told IStories that beyond storing decrypted messages, Telegram also attaches a unique device identifier to each message sent on the platform, known as auth_key_id, which can determine where a user is located and reveal their IP addresses. "If someone has access to Telegram traffic and cooperates with Russian intelligence services, this means that the device identifier becomes a really big problem—a tool for global surveillance of messenger users, regardless of where they are and what server they connect to," Woźniak said. What Happens Next Telegram has not commented publicly on the investigation or the allegations. The company is being paid $300 million to roll out Elon Musk's Grok chatbot on the messaging app. "This summer, Telegram users will gain access to the best AI technology on the market. @elonmusk and I have agreed to a 1-year partnership to bring xAI's @grok to our billion+ users and integrate it across all Telegram apps," Durov announced on May 28.
