Rep. Cassidy: No dice on Dwight ICE facility
Federal detention center runs into immediate opposition, state law
Downtown Dwight in Livingston County in central Illinois: it’s seeking to replace a closed women’s prison with an ICE detention center, but state officials are saying no dice. (Wikimedia Commons/Ivo Shandor)
By Ted Cox
State officials are moving to quash a federal agency as it initiates moves to build a detention center for undocumented immigrants in Dwight in central Illinois.
WBBM-TV in Chicago reported this week that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had initiated the first steps to build an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center on a 40-acre farm on the outskirts of town in Dwight, just northeast of Pontiac in Livingston County.
But the detention center, proposed for up to 1,000 prisoners, would appear to be in violation of a state law enacted just over a year ago in response to an earlier effort by the village to convert a former women’s prison to an ICE facility.
‘BBM got hold of a formal letter on ICE stationary seeking to initiate an environmental study on the site — one of the first necessary steps toward construction.
That set off alarms for state Rep. Kelly Cassidy of Chicago, lead sponsor of the bill Gov. Pritzker signed into law last year. She issued a news release Tuesday stating: “In spite of the Illinois General Assembly voting overwhelmingly to affirm the state’s long-held policy of prohibition of for-profit prisons last year, it would appear that ICE and the village of Dwight intend to continue the effort to build a for-profit ICE detention center in Illinois. The state has had a ban on privately run, for-profit prisons for decades, but legislation passed last year clarified that ban should also apply to non-criminal settings such as ICE detention centers.”
“I sponsored this bill knowing the realities of for-profit prisons and knowing that the mistreatment we’ve seen in these facilities across the country has no place in our state,” Cassidy said in an accompanying statement. “As we see reports from across the country of detainees contracting COVID-19 at an alarming rate in ICE detention centers, federal agents including ICE acting outside the law to ‘disappear’ protestors, and this administration’s ongoing war against immigrants, this appears to be yet one more example of this administration pursuing their hateful agenda regardless of legal standing.”
A year ago, plans to convert a former women’s prison in Dwight to an ICE detention center drew fierce opposition in the midst of the Trump administration’s threats that it was going to launch widespread raids rounding up undocumented aliens across the nation — raids that never really took place. When Pritzker signed the bill into law, he issued a statement saying: “Illinois is and always will be a welcoming state. Let me be perfectly clear: the state of Illinois stands as a firewall against Donald Trump's attacks on our immigrant communities. In the face of attempts to stoke fear, exploit division, and force families into the shadows, we are taking action. We will not allow private entities to profit off of the intolerance of this president. We will not allow local police departments (to) act as an extension of ICE.”
Rich Miller’s Capitol Fax reported Tuesday that state Sen. Robert Peters of Chicago, lead sponsor of the bill in the Senate, chimed in with a statement saying: “Whatever deal ICE is trying to cut is cloaked in the promise of jobs and profits, but is nothing more than a flagrant violation of state law. In reality, private detention centers historically have dangerous working conditions, low pay, and a lack of benefits — not to mention the inhumane war they wage on detainees under the direction of the Trump administration. This is yet another example of why we can’t trust this administration. Time and time again, they bulldoze our collective safety and health all in the name of pitting communities against each other.”
The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the National Immigrant Justice Center were no less eloquent, putting out a statement saying: “The state of Illinois spoke loudly and clearly last year when the General Assembly passed and Gov. Pritzker signed the Private Detention Facility Moratorium Act: private prison companies are not welcome in our state, and no one should profit from keeping people in detention. Yet ICE, an agency that claims to exist to enforce the law, is defying the will of our state and acting in an unlawful manner by attempting to move forward with the Dwight immigration prison.
“All of this is happening as Department of Homeland Security agents are being deployed to American cities without any real need or accountability,” it added, “as DHS continues to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling preserving the DACA program, and as ICE in Chicago is planning a ‘citizen’s academy’ to train civilians on arrest tactics and firearms use. Our organizations will continue to fight to hold DHS and ICE accountable, to stop the harms they are inflicting and the fear they are creating in our communities, and to make our state welcoming for all.”
Dwight lost 450 jobs and an estimated $50 million in annual economic impact when its women’s prison closed in 2013. Its bid to convert that former prison to an ICE detention center was projected to create 280 jobs. According to the Homeland Security letter obtained by ‘BBM, the newly proposed facility would be separate from the former prison, but was still projected to employ 362 people.
Cassidy was sympathetic to those arguments, pointing out in her release that she had opposed closure of the women’s prison, but she held firm, as her release cited that “local governments around the country have found that the promises made by for-profit prison developers rarely come to fruition. Once the prison is built and the dangerous working conditions, low pay, and lack of benefits become the reality, it is often too late to go back.”
She added: “The village of Dwight should acknowledge the reality that the state has made our policy abundantly clear on the question of whether someone should profit off of putting humans in cages with the passage of HB2040 and abandon this wrongheaded approach to economic development not only is a flagrant violation of state law, but putting their residents at significant risk.”