How a Small Kansas City Became a Critical Hub for Trump’s Deportation Regime Against Its Will

Leavenworth, Kansas, a small city that was once home to a maximum-security prison, has become a crucial hub for the Trump administration's deportation regime. This transformation happened over a year's time as the city grappled with the controversial project. The deal was in motion for over a year before Leavenworth City Commission gave in to the plan, allowing CoreCivic to reopen their notorious prison and fill it with immigrants.

Mayor Nancy Bauder expressed her strong moral objection to the over 500 immigrants held at the facility. As the Trump administration and CoreCivic pushed for expanding the federal detention network, city officials realized they couldn't afford to fight it. After a protracted legal battle that drained city funds, CoreCivic offered a $1.5 million impact payment to reimburse the city’s legal expenses and pledged $400,000 a year to the local government.

The Midwest Regional Reception Center, located in Leavenworth, now serves as the Midwest hub for the mass detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants, following the hub-and-spoke model used by ICE. This model allows ICE to move detainees and staff between smaller facilities and a larger facility as a center of operations, obscuring the scale of its operations and enabling quick movement of immigrants through the system.