Local officials in a rural Tennessee town are scheduled to meet today to consider an agreement to turn a former state prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company.
It comes amid US President Donald Trump's immigration enforcement crackdown.
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 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention centre run by CoreCivic Inc.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it had "serious concerns about transparency and accountability in the decision-making process".
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. She 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".
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 then-president Joe Biden ordered the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with private detention facilities. In January, 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 US$26.50 (NZ$44.50) per hour.
The facility would also generate about US$325,000 in annual property tax revenue and US$200,000 for Mason that could be used for schools, infrastructure improvements and other projects, the company said.
The morning's headlines in 90 seconds, including the legal fight to get a New Zealand woman and her child out of US immigration detention, sliding house prices, and Taylor Swift's big reveal. (Source: 1News)
"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 US$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 US$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 1300, Mason is located in Tipton County, about 60 kilometres northeast of Memphis. When it was open, the prison was the town's largest employer and an important economic engine.
Sarah Shaw and her six-year-old son have been detained by US immigration officials after she tried to return to America from a trip to Canada. (Source: 1News)
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 Governor Ron DeSantis has said it is preparing to build a second detention centre at a Florida National Guard training centre in the northern part of the state.
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