Wyatt Detention Facility board chair resigns

The volunteer chairperson of the governing board for Rhode Island’s only privately-operated detention facility has resigned after six years, citing his new senior role in state government.

James J. Lombardi III submitted his resignation from the Central Falls Detention Facility Corporation to Central Falls Mayor Maria Rivera on May 5. His departure was made public Monday, July 6, at the corporation’s first board meeting since April. Lombardi did not attend the April meeting.

Lombardi was hired as chief of staff at the Rhode Island Department of Administration. In his resignation letter, he said that he was stepping down from the Wyatt board to “focus my time and attention on this new role.”

“I leave the Detention Facility in a much different and more positive place since taking over as chairman,” Lombardi wrote in his resignation letter. “With our stakeholders, we were able to successfully navigate through the pandemic and myriad financial and legal disputes.” 

Lombardi’s departure from the corporation’s five-person board adds new uncertainty to a facility embroiled in years-long litigation with bondholders and renewed scrutiny over its partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

“Right now this board does not have a chairman,” board member Anthony Goes said at the start of Monday’s meeting. The posted agenda included the item “Discussion, vote, or other action regarding Chairman nomination.” 

Goes ran the board meeting after the board voted 2-0 to appoint him as acting chair, with Goes abstaining and Herman Yip and Matthew Mulligan voting in favor. The vote was not accepted because of the lack of a quorum with Anthony Manfredi absent. 

Members of the Wyatt board are appointed by the mayor of Central Falls and confirmed by the City Council. Rivera said in a statement to Rhode Island Current that Lombardi “led the Wyatt with professionalism and we thank him for his long service.” 

Lombardi declined to comment. Through a Wyatt spokesperson, Lisa Doucet-Albert, he repeated the reason he resigned was “to focus on my new role with the State of Rhode Island.”

“We thank Chairman Lombardi for his years of dedicated service to the Wyatt Detention Facility,” Doucet-Albert said. “His leadership was instrumental in leading the Facility through challenging times and stabilizing its operations. We wish him success in his new position.”

Lombardi also submitted his letter of resignation from the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority (RIPTA) Board of Directors on May 26. He was appointed to the RITPA board by Gov. Dan McKee in January 2024 for a term that was scheduled to end April 1, 2027. His seat is now listed as vacant on RIPTA’s website. Meeting minutes show he was last present for the board’s March 26 meeting. The minutes for the April 30 and May 20 meetings list him as absent. 

At the time Lombardi joined the Wyatt board as chair in 2019, he was treasurer for the city of Providence. An attorney and CPA, he was a field agent for the Internal Revenue Service earlier in his career.

In 2020, the Rhode Island Ethics Commission issued an advisory opinion clearing Lombardi  to hold the Providence job, the Wyatt board chairmanship, elected membership on the North Smithfield School Committee, and appointed membership to the Rhode Island Board of Accountancy. 

Lombardi was reappointed to a second five-year term on the Wyatt board in 2024. His tenure brought some financial victories for the long-struggling facility. The corporation received pandemic-aid grants totaling nearly $5 million from the federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that were later forgiven. In April, the facility made its first impact payment to the City of Central Falls in five years.

Lombardi first joined the Wyatt board six months after the facility resumed its contract to house ICE detainees after a 10-year hiatus that began with the death of a detainee from untreated cancer. In the interim years, the U.S. Marshals Service was the facility’s primary client.  

ICE’s return drew sharp criticism from the ACLU and protests, including one where a Wyatt employee drove his truck into a line of protesters sitting at the entrance to the facility’s parking lot. In April 2019, during the short tenure of Joseph Molina Flynn as board chairperson, the board voted to expel ICE as a client, triggering a $130 million lawsuit from bondholders demanding that ICE remain so that the Wyatt could fulfill its fiduciary duties. ICE has continued to use the 770-person-capacity facility, with a reported count of 103 detainees at Wyatt, as of Monday’s meeting. The warden reported an additional US Marshals Service detainee population of 554.

Flynn held the chair position for less than a month. He cited the time demands of the chair position, and its incompatibility with his full-time legal practice in announcing his resignation.

At Lombardi’s first meeting as chair in October 2019, the board voted to ratify a controversial forbearance agreement with bondholders, despite protesters chanting “Shame! Shame.” 

“I understand that some of you want the Wyatt shut down, and I will tell you that is simply not an option,” Lombardi told protesters then.

In written testimony submitted to the House State Government & Elections Committee in 2021, Lombardi responded to three bills aimed at reforming or closing the Wyatt. His letter corrected “misstatements and misconceptions” that led people to believe the Wyatt was a private, for-profit facility when it is technically a nonprofit, quasi-public entity. He defended the facility’s treatment of detainees, and cited the facility’s continuous accreditation by the American Correctional Association). If Wyatt were to close, Lombardi warned the state would be added as a party in the bondholders’ $130 million lawsuit.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the Central Falls website for the Detention Facility Corporation still listed Lombardi as the board’s chair.

Rivera said the city is searching for a new chair.

“Like always, we are out there looking for a new chair with requisite experience and have no further comment at this time,” Rivera said. 

Reporter Christopher Shea contributed to this story.