Advocates rally at NC legislature to oppose potential ICE detention expansion

Dozens of immigration advocates, faith leaders and community organizers gathered outside the North Carolina General Assembly on Tuesday, urging state lawmakers to oppose any expansion of federal immigration detention facilities in the state.

The rally came amid concerns that the Rivers Correctional Institution in rural Hertford County could reopen. The privately owned prison has been empty since its federal contract expired in 2021. Organizers said they learned through a lawsuit filed by the ACLU of North Carolina and partner groups that GEO Group, which owns the facility, had proposed reopening Rivers as a detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The protest was organized by the ACLU of North Carolina, the North Carolina Council of Churches and the Southern Detention Center Coalition. Speakers called on lawmakers to publicly oppose any future detention expansion and to resist new facilities in the state.

Caroline Stephenson, a Hertford County resident, said she has noticed increased activity at the facility in recent weeks.

“Hertford County needs jobs, we need investment, we need capital dollars, but we’re not going to be gaslit into thinking that reopening Rivers is a good thing for the county,” she said. “We’re not going to be gaslit into thinking that there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Organizers with the Carolina Migrant Network and Brava NC, a Raleigh-based nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights, criticized conditions at the Stewart Detention Center in neighboring Georgia, including inadequate medical care and the prolonged isolation of detainees. The facility is owned by another private prison company.

“These companies are not building community, they’re building businesses — business models around cages, isolation and fear,” said Iliana Santillan, executive director of Brava NC.

The potential expansion in North Carolina comes as more immigrants are choosing voluntary departure rather than continuing to fight their cases while in detention. A 10-month-old Trump administration policy of mandatory detention without bond requires immigrants to remain in custody while their cases proceed. According to a Stateline analysis, voluntary departures during the second Trump administration reached 89,494 cases as of May 1, more than seven times the number recorded in the final 16 months of the Biden administration.

Voluntary departures spike as immigrants face squalid detention, pressure to leave

The Rev. Jennifer Cooper, executive director of the North Carolina Council of Churches, said faith leaders plan to deliver letters to elected officials urging them to oppose any ICE detention expansion in the state.

“We’re going to lay out in the letter the expectation that they will join us, and that they will say no, this will not happen in our state, this will not happen on our watch, this is not our North Carolina,” she said. “Our North Carolina is a place that welcomes immigrants and treats them as people in our midst.”

NC Newsline reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and GEO Group for comment but did not receive a response by press time.