When I was reading The Manchester Journal’s account of an ICE detainee being whisked away to a prison — oops, my mistake, a “processing center” — hundreds of miles away, it rang a faint bell in the back of my mind.

As The Journal reported, Davona Williams had been moved without notice to the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan.

North Lake… Michigan… why does that sound familiar?

Well, it happens to be a repurposed version of the North Lake Correctional Facility, operated by GEO Group, the for-profit incarceration giant. When North Lake was operating as a prison, the state of Vermont contracted with it to house hundreds of Vermont inmates. It’s located in what can fairly be described as the middle of nowhere; Baldwin is a town of 863 located roughly halfway between Grand Rapids and Traverse City. I can tell you as a native Michigander, that’s deep in the Michigan countryside. Not exactly an easy trip for a family wanting to visit their incarcerated relative. (A 13-hour drive from Montpelier, in fact.)

And that’s where Davona Williams now finds herself. Wonderful.

But there’s more, much more, to tell about the grubby history of the North Lake Name Your Penitentiary.

The facility has had a short and checkered history. It originally opened in 2005 as the Michigan Youth Correctional Facility, a prison for young offenders, apparently built and operated by GEO Group. But it closed six years later as “a cost-saving move,” per The Burlington Free Press, and remember when the Freeps actually had a solid news department and offered broad coverage of state affairs? (Freeps stories were found on Newspapers.com, to which I maintain a paid subscription.)

The Free Press reported in 2015 that the state of Vermont had reached the end of a multiyear contract with the Corrections Corporation of America (later renamed CoreCivic) to house hundreds of Vermont inmates. It seems that GEO Group, with an uninhabited prison on its hands in Michigan, underbid CCA for the contract, and hey presto, about 900 Vermont inmates were shipped off to what became the North Lake Correctional Facility, Now For All Ages. (The last bit was added by me.) At the time, the Vermont inmates were the sole occupants, although GEO had hopes of winning business with other states interested in outsourcing their prisoners.

A few months after North Lake’s reopening, Valley News columnist Jim Kenyon asked the Vermont Department of Corrections if he could visit North Lake. He effectively got stonewalled — that is, until Yours Truly inquired with the DOC. Which then explained that Kenyon’s request had gotten lost in the shuffle, sorry about that, but it would immediately forward Kenyon’s request to GEO Group. Which continued the stonewall. I don’t think Kenyon ever made it inside North Lake’s walls.

According to VisaVerge.com, a website for immigration-related news, the North Lake prison had a troubled history including allegations of poor living conditions, abuse by prison staff, overcrowding, inadequate access to health care, and chronic understaffing due to the very low pay rates on offer by GEO. (Bear in mind this is an area with high unemployment, and yet the prison couldn’t retain a workforce.) Gotta keep those profit margins high enough to make shareholders happy.

Two years later GEO Group ended its contract with Vermont, and the state reached agreement with the state of Pennsylvania to house our excess population in its prisons. (Currently, the state contracts with the professional evildoers at CoreCovic to house our excess inmate population at a private prison in Mississippi.) North Lake closed again in 2022 when the Biden administration ended the practice of placing federal inmates in for-profit prisons.

And then came the election of Donald Trump and his wide-ranging, unconstitutional crackdown on immigrants. It was a windfall for the private prison industry. GEO reached agreement with ICE to use North Lake as a dumping ground (not the actual term) for detainees. According to the Northern Michigan Journalism Project, the renamed North Lake Processing Center — ah, the sweet, sweet smell of deceptive nomenclature — was slated to become “the second-largest ICE detention center in the country.”

Nice. GEO Group gets a rescue from its overbuilding thanks to the enforced generosity of the American taxpayer, and hundreds upon hundreds of immigrants are being “processed” in a facility deep in an area of Michigan that’s about as poor and lily-white as the Northeast Kingdom — and far more removed from population centers or transit opportunities. (If you didn’t have a car, you could fly to Grand Rapids, catch a bus north to Reed City, and then walk about 15 miles due west to Baldwin.)

The newly rebranded and repurposed “processing center” attracted a protest rally outside its gates on September 6, which reportedly drew a crowd of at least 200. According to The Michigan Advance, “Reports have emerged of harsh conditions at the facility… with immigrants describing inadequate food and delays in their legal cases.” Advocacy groups have said that ICE’s deals with GEO Group are shrouded in secrecy; any fresh visitation request from Jim Kenyon would certainly be ignored or swiftly rejected.

I wouldn’t expect anything better. If GEO Group was cutting corners and making life unbearable for inmates and staff before, surely it’s being given free rein to operate the “processing center” however it wants. After all, Trump doesn’t give a shit about the health or constitutional rights of detainees.

And that’s where Davona Williams, a law-abiding contributor to society and mother of a young son, now finds herself. Congratulations, Vermont. Our tradition of shipping off our inmates on distant facilities operated by profiteering corporations adds another shameful chapter to the story.