Marcia Levering<\/span> nearly died at work on February 6, 2021. She was working as a prison guard at the former medium-security federal prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, a facility operated by the private prison company CoreCivic. One of Levering\u2019s overwhelmed colleagues buzzed open the wrong door, releasing a high-risk prisoner directly into Levering\u2019s path. \u201cHe kind of gave me this eerie green grin,\u201d she said. Then boiling water hit her face.<\/p>\n The facility, which had long been plagued by overcrowding, chronic understaffing, and deadly violence, closed later that year after a Biden executive order against all private prison profiteering put its century-long run to an end.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then came the second Trump administration and its plans to supercharge the business of incarceration in the United States.<\/p>\n As of March, the notorious prison is back up and running, and this time it\u2019s being filled with immigrants, the majority of whom have no criminal conviction<\/a>, as part of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement\u2019s brutal deportation regime targeting noncitizens.<\/p>\n Last month, CoreCivic sold the facility<\/a> to the Department of Homeland Security for $238.4 million, although it expects to keep operating the site under its existing ICE arrangement. But local officials tell the story of a massive for-profit prison company steamrolling community opposition as well as the city\u2019s own established processes, and ultimately forcing their hand to participate in a project of mass detention \u2014 a system that advocates and former employees say has led to unsafe, violent conditions for both detainees and employees.<\/p>\n Current conditions for detainees held at the Midwest Regional Reception Center are hard to verify from outside. In its reporting on the sale, the Kansas City Star<\/a> put the facility\u2019s population at 365 men and 112 women, a count shared at a July 28 community advisory board meeting. The paper described two local groups in contact with detainees and their families, among them Northland Neighbors United, which said in a July statement<\/a> that detainees have reported medical neglect, inadequate food, and prolonged lockdowns. CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin told the Star the allegations do not reflect how the facility operates.<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t \u201cmanufacturing notebooks and pens. This is profiting off of people being put in cages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n For Esmie Tseng, the communications director for the ACLU of Kansas, coverage of these city meetings sanitizes the reality for detainees.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re making a contract out of putting people in cages,\u201d Tseng said. \u201cThis isn\u2019t just moving widgets from one place to another, or manufacturing notebooks and pens. This is profiting off of people being put in cages.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n By early 2025, the city of Leavenworth had already said \u201cno\u201d multiple times to deepening its involvement in immigration detention. After Trump\u2019s reelection, CoreCivic tried again, working with city officials for three months before announcing on a Zoom call it would reopen the facility as an immigration jail without waiting for a special use permit, or SUP, to be approved. The city sued to force CoreCivic to go through its permitting process, and the company countersued, arguing its federal contract allows it to bypass local law. In June 2025, a Leavenworth State District Court judge granted a temporary injunction<\/a> barring CoreCivic from operating without a special use permit.\u00a0<\/p>\n During that first push on March 25, 2025 \u2014 the day the city commission was scheduled to meet in closed session about the ICE contract \u2014 John Malloy, CoreCivic\u2019s vice president of federal partnership relations, emailed Leavenworth\u2019s commissioners with what seemed like an attractive financial offer: \u201c300 well-paying jobs at starting salaries of $28.58\/hour,\u201d more than $1,000,000 annually in property taxes, a $1 million one-time impact fee, and annual payments to the city and police department. The final permit set CoreCivic\u2019s impact fee at $1.5 million, which City Manager Scott Peterson said covered the city\u2019s legal bills.<\/p>\n Malloy also emphasized the city\u2019s approval process must move quickly to meet growing demand to ramp up the number of available immigration prison beds.<\/p>\n \u201cWhile ICE\u2019s pressing need for capacity dictates the speed at which we must move to hire and ready the facility \u2026 we do not wish this speed to harm what we hope will be a long-term beneficial relationship with the City,\u201d Malloy wrote in the email. He added this expedited timeline would not allow for \u201ca protracted permitting process.\u201d<\/p>\n He also touted that the community response to job postings had already been strong, with more than 500 applicants \u201cin the hiring process\u201d and more coming in every day.<\/p>\n Levering, an Army veteran and Native American, heard a version of that pitch five years earlier in a cold call from a recruiting agency. Back in 2020, when CoreCivic was contracted to run the facility as a federal prison by the U.S. Marshals Service, the recruiting agency offered her 12-hour shifts and only three days a week, she told The Intercept. The schedule sold her. With four kids in school, the promise of four days at home made the job feel like an ideal fit for her busy life. She saw the work as service, an extension of her years in the Army. In hindsight, she said, \u201cObviously, [that\u2019s] not the case, because it\u2019s a private prison.\u201d<\/p>\n Mike Trapp, co-founder of the Carceral Accountability Council<\/a>, said CoreCivic hires people the state prison system and Federal Bureau of Prisons might otherwise have turned away over physical and age limitations, because the company has \u201clower standards of entry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n But Bill Rogers, a former guard at the facility under the Marshals contract, said there were effectively no hiring standards.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThink about the people you\u2019re going to get to work at a facility if you really just don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cYou gotta pass their background check \u2026 and you gotta be breathing,\u201d he said. \u201cThink about the people you\u2019re going to get to work at a facility if you really just don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n One year after Malloy\u2019s email to persuade city officials, the facility already had 150 employees on its payroll, halfway to the 300 jobs Malloy had promised. At a February 2 hearing, the city\u2019s planning commission voted 5-1 to recommend approval of CoreCivic\u2019s special use permit. The City Commission granted final approval on March 10 by a vote of 4 to 1.<\/p>\n Levering\u2019s schedule amounted to a minimum six-day, often seven-day, workweek, with shifts of 12 hours or longer plus mandatory overtime, she said. Levering rarely saw her four children, who were then in middle and high school. The evenings she\u2019d pictured spending time with them at home never came to pass.<\/p>\n After onboarding, officers were promised 40 hours of continuing training annually, Rogers said. He received that training for about his first two years, he said, until staffing ran too thin to pull officers off the floor. Left to teach herself, Levering said she learned more from prisoners than her peers or her supervisors. They told her who to keep an eye on, how to read danger on the floor, and where to set boundaries.<\/p>\n In response to questions from The Intercept, Gustin, the CoreCivic spokesperson, said the company\u2019s training \u201cmeets or exceeds\u201d the standards of the American Correctional Association.<\/p>\n Levering said that during her time at the facility, shifts that called for 24 to 25 officers often had just five or six. Within months, CoreCivic began eliminating bubble officers, who monitor units from a secure, elevated central control booth known as the \u201cbubble.\u201d These officers are critical for safety, as they control access to different zones of the prison by electronically opening and closing doors. Their elevated position also allows them an eye-in-the-sky perspective, where they can be the first to spot emergencies before they escalate.<\/p>\n In an interview, Shari Rich, who worked at the facility for nearly 13 years and counts Levering as a close friend, traced Levering\u2019s assault to CoreCivic\u2019s decision to eliminate bubble officers.<\/p>\n \u201cIt should never have happened,\u201d she said of Levering\u2019s assault. Rich placed the blame squarely on CoreCivic eliminating bubble officers. She said she previously watched a case manager get brutally attacked by an inmate while the bubble ran with one person, a post she understood was supposed to be staffed by two or three.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rich is still speaking out against the company, she said, because of what happened to Levering.<\/p>\n Years earlier, a 2017 Justice Department inspector general audit<\/a> had flagged the facility\u2019s failure to staff mandatory security posts, warning it compromised safety and security.<\/p>\n Officers were increasingly posted alone, sometimes responsible for two 64-person units, Levering said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey were hiring kids right out of high school,\u201d Levering said, calling them \u201csitting ducks.\u201d Without enough officers, downstream everyday functions also collapsed. Recreation stopped when there was no one to run it, Rich and Rogers said. Officers were pulled off their units for weeks at a time, according to Rogers, which left inmates in day rooms with no one to turn to. The locks to the cells were breaking, Levering said, even as CoreCivic refused to put enough people on the units to keep them secure. The ACLU and federal public defenders confirmed<\/a> that detainees, unable to lock their own cells, built makeshift barricades and armed themselves.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The day an inmate split Rogers\u2019s head open with a food tray, he said he was covering three units alone with no bubble officer watching. He had already emailed the warden about the lack of coverage. He lost his radio in the assault, stranding him and unable to call for backup. The wound took 14 staples to close, he said. Rogers also said he was required to finish his shift before driving himself to the hospital. All the warden had to say to him about the incident was that \u201cthe takedown you did was a little rough,\u201d he recounted.<\/p>\n \u201cHow do we expect them to act?\u201d Rogers asked. \u201cWe have to bear some of that responsibility. \u2026 We lost control of that place.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to bear some of that responsibility. \u2026 We lost control of that place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Gustin said CoreCivic does not supply specific figures about staffing in any of its prisons for \u201csafety reasons,\u201d but added, \u201cWe are appropriately staffed based on the number of individuals in our care.\u201d CoreCivic attributed staffing shortages to Covid, despite the 2017 audit<\/a>, which found chronic understaffing years before the pandemic. In 2021, ACLU affiliates and federal public defender offices in four states jointly documented<\/a> an average of nearly 37 violent incidents per month at CoreCivic Leavenworth between May and July of that year, just months after Levering was attacked.<\/p>\n Asked about the 2021 conditions, Gustin said \u201cstaffing was the main contributor to the challenges.\u201d He also said incidents from \u201cmore than five years ago\u201d do not reflect conditions in the facility today.\u00a0<\/p>\n On the day of the incident that would leave her permanently disabled, Levering said that she and her co-worker Diana Polanco were the only two officers on the floor. It was Polanco\u2019s second day on the job, and she wasn\u2019t yet OC certified<\/a>, a prerequisite for carrying pepper spray.<\/p>\n Levering remembers the inmate being released directly into her path but little else about the assault.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere the hell is everybody?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n \u201cMy eyes were closed, and I was in the fetal position on the ground. I didn\u2019t know he was stabbing me, because your adrenaline\u2019s going,\u201d Levering said. According to the Leavenworth Police Department report, she was stabbed four times<\/a> in the ear, once in the arm, and twice in the abdomen. Before anyone reached her to help, she remembered wondering, \u201cWhere the hell is everybody?\u201d<\/p>\n Polanco tried to step in to help Levering. She suffered a broken jaw<\/a>, stab wounds to her back and face, fractured ribs, and lasting nerve damage.<\/p>\n Levering\u2019s injuries were catastrophic. She lost 24 inches of her colon and spleen, according to the incident report. A punctured lung was not disclosed to her for a year, until she says a doctor seemingly mentioned it by accident. She has received 16 facial reconstruction surgeries, and five years later, she is still undergoing medical procedures related to her injuries. She lives with permanent facial paralysis, chronic vertigo, chronic gastrointestinal issues, and walks with a cane. Her PTSD, aggravated by serving in Iraq, is debilitating. After 10 months as a prison guard, she now lives on $825 a month in disability payments.<\/p>\n Warren Richardson, the federal prisoner who attacked Levering and Polanco, pleaded guilty<\/a> to attempted murder and assault with a dangerous weapon, and was sentenced to 300 months. The federal record describes the attack as \u201cnearly killing\u201d both women.<\/p>\n Over roughly five years at the facility, Rogers said he was assaulted seven times, and no one from CoreCivic asked if he was OK or offered counseling. Since the injuries were on the job, Rogers said the company was responsible for his medical expenses. But the invoices remained unpaid and were forwarded to a collections agency instead, he said. Trapp, of the Carceral Accountability Council, has watched the job take its toll on Rogers.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen he gets talking about some of the deaths that he witnessed, he\u2019s re-experiencing it. I can see it in his eyes,\u201d Trapp said. \u201cI\u2019ve worked with a lot of trauma survivors, and I\u2019m not qualified to make a diagnosis in the state of Kansas, but I see it, the hauntedness.\u201d<\/p>\n Rich couldn\u2019t understand why other injured officers were paid settlements while Levering only had her initial medical bills covered, despite suffering from permanent disabilities. With no further support from CoreCivic, the Carceral Accountability Council launched<\/a> a GoFundMe to help with her continued recovery.<\/p>\n CoreCivic did not respond to detailed questions about the February 6, 2021, attack, the uncertified officer on the floor, or its treatment of Levering afterward, including whether it provided any support for her injuries.<\/p>\n Widely known as one of the nation\u2019s quintessential prison towns<\/a>, Leavenworth, Kansas, has been in the corrections business for more than 150 years. The Army raised Fort Leavenworth above the Missouri River in 1827, and later established what remains the U.S. military\u2019s only maximum-security prison<\/a>. Kansas opened its state penitentiary<\/a> in neighboring Lansing in 1868. By 1903, the federal penitentiary<\/a> had taken its first prisoners. Convicts built much of it, marching over<\/a> from the old military prison at Fort Leavenworth each day. For generations, guarding prisoners has been one of Leavenworth\u2019s steadiest livelihoods, work that has employed hundreds<\/a> across the fort, the state pen, and the federal walls.<\/p>\n In the U.S., the private prison industry is worth somewhere around $6 billion, much of which comes from government contracts. Corrections Corporation of America, which later rebranded as CoreCivic, opened the Leavenworth Detention Center in 1992 as the country\u2019s first for-profit maximum-security prison under direct federal contract. Gustin, the company\u2019s spokesperson, acknowledged \u201cthere were challenges as that contract neared expiration\u201d but said the company was otherwise \u201cproud of the operational track record we\u2019ve built.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n CoreCivic, which owns more prisons and jails<\/a> than any private company in the country, has a documented history<\/a> of neglect, safety failures, and worker exploitation. In 2021, while still under the U.S. Marshals Service contract, Kansas federal Judge Julie Robinson called the facility \u201can absolute hell hole<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t see us as humans, or the inmates as humans.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n But with the advent of the Trump administration\u2019s mass detention<\/a> and deportation system, the company is looking forward to a bright \u2014 and very profitable<\/a> \u2014 future. On a February earnings call<\/a>, CEO Patrick Swindle called Immigration and Customs Enforcement \u201cour first customer 43 years ago\u201d and \u201cour largest customer for over a decade.\u201d The company\u2019s profits reached $116.5 million in 2025, a nearly 70 percent increase<\/a> over the previous year, and ICE revenue more than doubled in the final quarter. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July 2025, directed roughly $45 billion<\/a> to expanding ICE detention, nearly quadrupling the agency\u2019s annual spending. On the call, the company said it could supply ICE with nearly 13,000 more beds<\/a> for the Trump administration\u2019s expansion<\/a>, a figure Swindle said \u201cdoes not include additional capacity we may be able to provide through other means.\u201d<\/p>\n Of those beds, 1,033 are in Leavenworth. Nine days after the city commission vote on March 10, CoreCivic reopened its doors and began housing ICE detainees<\/a>. As a condition of approval, the special use permit required the city to establish a community oversight committee.<\/p>\n Behind every understaffed shift and unanswered emergency code at Leavenworth is a facility expected to generate $60 million a year<\/a>. To Levering, CoreCivic\u2019s profit incentive means \u201cthey don\u2019t see us as humans, or the inmates as humans. \u2026 We\u2019re all numbers to produce for them.\u201d<\/p>\n The warning bells about Leavenworth started ringing years ago. The 2017 inspector general report concluded the facility had concealed triple-bunking<\/a>, where a third bed was installed in several cells meant to house two inmates, from auditors staging full staffing and cleanup on inspection days. Those concerns went unaddressed, Rich said, save for a scramble to paint and clean before each audit. CoreCivic\u2019s own internal investigation concluded the bunks had been removed \u201cintentionally to conceal\u201d the practice, and the company responded to its own finding by instituting ethics training and a non-retaliation policy for employees reporting misconduct.<\/p>\n Among the promises that haven\u2019t come to fruition are good-paying jobs for the community.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n\n
The Pitch<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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The Arithmetic of Danger\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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What the Machine Produced<\/h2>\n
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The ICE Escalation in a Town of Prisons<\/h2>\n
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Promises Made, Promises Broken<\/h2>\n
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