Officials in a rural Tennessee town voted on Tuesday to approve agreements to turn a former prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company, despite loud objections from upset residents and activists during a contentious public meeting.
The five-member board of aldermen in Mason, along with the mayor, Eddie Noeman, and vice-mayor, Reynaldo Givhan, met in a fire station garage to discuss converting the closed West Tennessee detention facility into a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center run by CoreCivic Inc, America’s second-largest private prison operator.
Also present were a few dozen vocal, angry members of the public who oppose allowing Ice to house immigrants in Mason who have been taken into custody, as Donald Trump pushes his mass deportation agenda forward.
The US president has touted a Florida detention facility where allegations of mistreatment of detainees have drawn lawsuits from civil rights advocates and environmental groups. And CoreCivic is buoyed up by its increasing immigration detention contracts as well as the prospect of many more to come amid the new Republican legislation providing billions for Ice and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
But the company is also under a cloud of criticism for some of the conditions reported at its facilities, as it cashes in. This includes Tennessee but most recently, as a result of an investigation by the Guardian, concerning a federal detention facility the company runs in New Mexico.
In Tennessee on Tuesday night, the first vote of the meeting resulted in approval for a contract with CoreCivic to resume operating the facility, which was closed in 2021 after Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with private detention facilities. Trump reversed that order in January. The second vote, to approve an agreement with Ice, also passed. It is not immediately known when the facility will reopen.
Noeman said he wanted to reopen the shuttered prison to bring jobs and economic development to the town, which has struggled with financial problems and needs infrastructure improvements. With a population of about 1,300, Mason is located about 40 miles north-east of Memphis and at least two-thirds of the residents are Black, according to US census data. When it was open, the prison was the town’s largest employer and an important economic engine.
Noeman called turning the closed prison over to CoreCivic and Ice a “win-win situation”, drawing loud boos in the room.
“It’s nothing personal about any immigrant,” Noeman said, adding moments later that “to give jobs to the people is what I’m looking for.”
At times, Noeman argued with attenders, questioning whether they actually lived in Mason and telling them: “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Before the meeting, board member Virginia Rivers told the Associated Press that she did not support turning the prison into an Ice facility because “I don’t like what Ice stands for, how they treat the people.”
During the meeting, she noted that some immigrants without criminal records were being swept up by immigration agents and separated from their families. She said approving the contracts would make Mason “complicit in the abusive treatment of immigrants”.
“We as officials of the town of Mason that were elected by the citizens should consider the consequences and the hurt that this would cause our local community, our neighbors, Tennessee schools and many families,” Rivers said.
CoreCivic said in a statement that the Ice facility would create nearly 240 new jobs, and it is now advertising openings for detention officers at a pay rate of $26.50 per hour.
“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.
One of the speakers, Charles Watkins, noted that CoreCivic was the operator of the prison under its previous name, Corrections Corporation of America.
“How is it that we can consistently let these organizations come into Black communities and then just somehow overwhelm us with the few dollars that they throw on the table as crumbs while they take the majority of the take back to wherever they came from?” Watkins said.
Tennessee’s corrections agency has fined CoreCivic $44.7m across four prisons from 2022 through February, including for understaffing violations.
Records obtained by AP also show the company has spent more than $4.4m 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 CoreCivic has defended itself by pointing to industrywide problems with hiring and keeping workers.
