ICE expected to open mass detention facility in NC, sparking anger, pushback

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will be reopening a for-profit prison in Winton, North Carolina, as one of the largest immigrant detention facilities on the East Coast, according to reports from the New York Times.

The report cited internal ICE documents showing plans for a mass detention center in the former Rivers Correctional Institution with 1,400 beds. It’s part of an agreement between the federal government and  GEO Group, a nationwide private prison network.

On its website, GEO Group recently published a job posting for a “facility maintenance manager” for Rivers Correctional Institution, a prison that has been empty for five years. A separate recruiting website lists the posting date as July 11.

GEO Group previously operated the facility as a “criminal alien requirement” prison, reserved for non-citizens convicted of federal crimes, before the U.S. terminated its contract in 2021.

During its years of operation from 2001 to 2021, Rivers was the subject of a litany of health and safety complaints from inmates who alleged understaffing, inadequate medical care, and pervasive discrimination by staff.

In a 2007 class action lawsuit, inmates incarcerated at Rivers alleged a pattern of denial of medical treatment that led to severe injury and death in some instances. “The health care system at the Rivers facility is broken,” the complaint alleged. GEO Group was ultimately dismissed from the lawsuit before those claims could be addressed.

GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment on the facility’s reopening.

Reports of ICE expansion in Cary spark outcry

A spokesperson for ICE said in a statement to NC Newsline that while the agency is at work expanding its capacity around the U.S., no new facility is opening yet.

“We have no new detention centers to announce at this time,” the agency said in a statement. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”

Kristi Graunke, the legal director for the ACLU of North Carolina, said the facility has been on her radar for months. The Washington Post reported last August that the federal government was considering reopening it, and apparent construction activity at the facility led to protests by advocates and local residents in recent months.

“We had an inkling that this would be looked at, and certainly we were also hearing from community partners who were essentially seeing signs that Rivers would be reopened in Winton,” Graunke said. “Construction equipment, trucks, heavy machinery — items that suggested that work was taking place there.”

Gov. Josh Stein condemned the facility’s reopening on social media Friday. He emphasized that the facility is not state-owned, and he had no role in its reopening as a detention facility.

“ICE has a proven track record of arresting, detaining, and abusing American citizens, and the overwhelming majority of people ICE has detained have no criminal record. Meanwhile, last year dozens of people died while in ICE custody,” Stein wrote. “Like many other North Carolinians, I do not want it in our state. ICE and Border Patrol have not earned our trust.”

While public backlash has been effective in halting some ICE initiatives — including a push to repurpose warehouses around the U.S. as mass detention centers — advocates say there is little local residents can do to block a facility that has already been built from reopening.

“All the permitting and all the stuff that local communities can typically rally around when these things are proposed already happened decades ago at Rivers,” said Andreina Malki, a defense manager at immigrant rights group Siembra NC. “That being said, if it’s going to be opened as a detention center, I think we need to make sure that local elected officials or other community representatives have access to the place.”

The Hertford County Board of Commissioners did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement on social media earlier this year, the county government stressed that it has no ability to intervene in the facility’s activities.

“The Rivers Correctional Facility is a privately operated facility that operates under contract with the federal government,” the county wrote in February. “Decisions regarding its use, operations, or repurposing are made at the federal level and are not under the authority or control of Hertford County Government or the Hertford County Board of Commissioners.”

Malki said advocates can still make a difference by opposing further ICE expansion in the state.

“One thing that we can do in North Carolina in general, beyond Winton or Hertford County, is make sure that in places where we don’t have prisons built already, where we don’t have detention centers built, which are not zoned for that kind of facility, that that doesn’t happen,” Malki said. “If there’s a town or a city, county that’s proposing something like that, be proactive so that this is the last detention center that we see open in North Carolina.”