Shuttered private prisons in Oklahoma could be repurposed to hold migrants arrested in immigration raids.
On an earnings call last month, CEO of CoreCivic Damon Heninger said most of the company’s dormant or underused holdings will be revitalized, and Oklahoma is especially attractive.
“So our capacity at both our Diamondback facility, our North Fork facility right there on I-40 west of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City is usually a very big hub for air transportation for ICE and Marshal Service, so it checks a lot of boxes with those two facilities, and again, I think both of those will be very attractive to ICE,” said Heninger.
The city manager of Sayre, where North Fork Correctional Facility is located, said he is not aware of plans to reopen the prison but that he likely wouldn’t be informed by the company in any case.
Officials in Watonga, where Diamondback Correctional Facility is located, weren’t immediately available for comment.
CoreCivic, a private prison management company that’s seen its stock price jump 56% since President Donald Trump’s November reelection, has already inked a deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing to hold migrants.
The state of Oklahoma cut ties with the Cimarron facility in 2020 after a string of problems, including the deadliest prison fight in the state’s history.
A spokeswoman for the state, Kay Thompson, said the Department of Corrections “has nothing to do” with the contracts between the feds and CoreCivic.
Frustrated officials in Leavenworth, Kansas are suing CoreCivic over its bid to use the infamous prison as an immigrant detention center.
The Associated Press reports many of CoreCivic’s deals were finalized without a competitive bid process. The Geo Group has also been awarded no-bid contracts.
In a statement to KWGS, CoreCivic didn’t specify the status of its Oklahoma contracts, but said its “responsibility is to care for each person respectfully and humanely while they receive the legal due process that they are entitled to.”
Due process has been at issue as Trump pushes to reform immigration policy, with hundreds of immigrants being abruptly deported to foreign countries.
ICE didn’t immediately respond to a request for more information.
