The Democratic Legislature is looking at ways to limit, or end, an agreement allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (and other federal agencies) to house detainees at Vermont prisons. There’s a real itch for action because, well, Donald Trump’s enforcement regime is so thoroughly toxic, from the masks and the unmarked cars to the rank unconstitutionality of it all.

No argument there. But if you object to our complicity in Trump’s crackdown, what about our ongoing relationship with CoreCivic, the for-profit prison operator that’s making a fortune off Trump’s regime*? If we don’t want to be part of an arbitrary and punitive immigration enforcement system, well, isn’t CoreCivic an enthusiastic participant? Haven’t the company’s fortunes shot through the roof because of Trump?

*CoreCivic’s stock price basically doubled right after Trump’s election and has held its value since then. In spite of the Trump-triggered stock market swoon.

For those just tuning in, Vermont contracts with CoreCivic to house some of our inmates in a private prison in Mississippi. We’ve been doing this for years, with one for-profit operator or another. We’ve been told that we just don’t have enough space in our own prisons.

That may have been true in the past, but now? The numbers simply don’t add up.

So let’s end the contract, stop sending our inmates 1,400 miles from everything and everyone they know, and stop enriching an evil corporation.

Allow me to take you to Leavenworth, Kansas, a town known for nothing whatsoever except its connection to a federal prison that once housed America’s most notorious criminals, people like Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly. It’s a solidly Republican place whose economy depends on the presence of a number of state and federal prisons.

One of those facilities is a prison built by CoreCivic that closed in 2021 after the Biden administration ordered an end to contracts with private prison operators. While it was open, per the Marshall Project, it “was plagued by allegations of violent and inhumane conditions, prompting one federal judge to label the prison ‘an absolute hell hole.’” Now, under Trump, CoreCivic wants to reopen it as a “Reception Center” (good God, the shamelessness of their euphemisms) for the growing number people swept up in ICE’s ever-widening net.

And the people of Leavenworth don’t want it. The city government has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the reopening.

I’m sure that some of the objections are racist; they don’t want to host a prison aimed at detaining people of color. I mean, some of their families might move in, and they might stick around after release. But the backlash is more about the failings of CoreCivic. As a team of human rights lawyers wrote in a piece posted on The Kansas Reflector:

CoreCivic’s failures aren’t limited to Leavenworth. It operates criminal and immigration facilities across the country, many of which have long, sordid records of abuse and mismanagement. As attorneys and advocates, we have witnessed the devastating human cost of CoreCivic’s operations — whether it’s the 24-hour-a-day solitary confinement and rampant physical and sexual abuse suffered by those trapped inside, or the anxiety and stress endured by small-town workers left to manage the fallout.

There are reasons aplenty to end our relationship with CoreCivic. But the idea has reached a new level of moral urgency. Maybe, just maybe, if CoreCivic is too noxious for the good people of Leavenworth, it ought to be for us as well.

And don’t try to tell me we don’t have the space. Vermont’s inmate population is 1,491 as of April 30, according to the Department of Corrections. 122 of them are out of state. (75 are federal detainees, so it’s not just Mohsen Mahdawi* and those eight farmworkers.)

*Update: With the court-ordered release of Mahdawi, there are now “only” 74 federal detainees behind Vermont bars.

Well, back in the year 2009 our inmate population was roughly 2,400. And I don’t remember any of our prisons burning to the ground since then. (Although that might be an improvement in the case of our terrible women’s prison.) So you can’t tell me we don’t have enough space. You just can’t.

Our contract with CoreCivic is, as I wrote in 2023, “a choice, not a necessity.” Now, in the age of Trump, it’s an albatross around our neck, a stain on our character. If we’re so concerned about complicity in an authoritarian immigration regime, let’s stop sending our tax dollars to a company that’s profiting off said regime.