A judge on Wednesday barred a major U.S. private prison operator from housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered Kansas City area detention center unless it can get a permit from frustrated city officials.
Leavenworth County Judge John Bryant agreed after a packed hearing to grant the city of Leavenworth's request for a temporary restraining order against CoreCivic, one of the nation's largest private prison operators.
CoreCivic had claimed in legal filings that halting the opening of the 1,033-bed facility on the northwest outskirts of the Kansas City area would cost it 4.2 million in revenue each month. City officials said they anticipated the arrival of detainees apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was imminent under a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration.
Leavenworth isn't the first city where controversy has surrounded the reopening of a private prison as an ICE detention facility. In Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka sued the state's top federal prosecutor on Tuesday over his recent arrest on a trespassing charge at a federal immigration detention facility in that state, saying the Trump-appointed attorney had pursued the case out of political spite.
Scott Peterson, the city manager for Leavenworth, said he didn't know if the case in Kansas marked the first time a municipality had prevailed in court.