The shadiness of the proposed Franklin County prison gets even worse.
Franklin County’s local radio station KDYN reported today that a local official saw Joe Profiri at the proposed Franklin County prison site with… wait for it… three Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) representatives.
We can put two and two together.
We’ve long been suspicious of Sanders’ true reasons for trying so hard to get this prison built; there are plenty of other options for increasing the number of available beds in the state that she’s refused to consider, and plenty of other locations who begged for the economic development that follows a new megaprison; her dedication to this specific location led community advocates to suspect that it would be partly used for ICE detainees. It seems they were correct.
Let’s spin the web.
The Management
A company named CoreCivic will manage the Franklin County prison.
CoreCivic is the nation’s second-largest private prison company. There aren’t any CoreCivic facilities currently in Arkansas, but their recently retired CEO, Damon Hininger, has a documented history of political involvement with Sanders. Hininger has personally contributed the maximum allowable amounts to Sanders’ campaign, and as a company, CoreCivic has contributed substantially to Sanders’ political committee, TeamSHS. On top of those direct donations to Sanders, CoreCivic has dispersed funds to other Arkansas-based PACs like ARKPAC that work for extremist right-wing candidates.
As one of the largest private prison contractors in the United States, CoreCivic substantially profits from federal immigration detention contracts. Its political expenditures sway government officials into supporting new prisons, correctional facility expansions, and contracts with US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Arkansas is eligible to receive federal funding for immigration detention, and, presumably, that money would then go into CoreCivic’s pockets.
All this to say: there’s substantial financial incentives for Sanders, her political allies, and private companies that have donated substantial monies to Sanders to make this prison happen, and to make sure it happens now.
The Community
As we’ve stated over and over again, the surrounding citizens in Franklin County have made their opposition to the prison crystal clear. They want to protect their way of life, most importantly, but it can’t be emphasized enough that the location simply doesn’t make sense. There’s no infrastructure available to support a prison: no workforce, no power, no water, no roads, and no community support for a prison.
Given the horrific human rights abuses ICE has committed against American citizens since President Trump was re-elected, there’s also little appetite for immigration enforcement in the area. Franklin County folks have very strong feelings about civil liberties, which tracks with Arkansans’ general reluctance to let the government do whatever it wants and ignore our rights.
To put it another way, Arkansans – and Franklin County residents especially – mostly just want to be left alone. This billion-dollar boondoggle of a prison means every resident of a small, Arkansas county that would prefer to go about their private business will get co-opted into a national conversation about immigration they’d much rather sidestep.
Sarah’s not exactly respecting personal freedoms, we’d say.
By that we mean: Franklin County folks really, really don’t want this absurdly expensive, unviable, dumb prison project in their backyards. They’d vote for just about anyone that would fight like hell against the prison, and they’d work tirelessly against the project. Anything to do what’s right.
Finally, if this truly is to be a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, it’s yet another lie and misdirection from the Sanders administration. A federal detention facility is a whole ‘nother ballgame from the “more prison beds” Sanders claims she’s desperate to add to Department of Corrections capacity; immigration detention facilities require more intensive infrastructure, increased security, seriously skilled staff, and most importantly, community acceptance… none of which exist in Franklin County.
She should have been up front from the start about her plans for the new facility. Alas.
Instead, it seems, she’s going to slam an “Arkansas Alcatraz” down Franklin County’s throat, collect the federal paycheck, and funnel cash toward her friends running private prisons.
Arkansans deserve better, certainly. But the people of Franklin County, more than anyone, deserve transparency. They’ve dedicated thousands of hours, their personal finances, time with their families, and much, much more to finding out why Sanders has strangely fought so hard for this specific site.
Now we think we know: the administration seems to be planning on violating the rights of our neighbors and disappearing them into an expensive and inefficient Franklin County facility that nobody wants and nobody asked for.
Sounds about right for the Sanders administration.
