Ashley Hernandez, William Rogers, and Esmie Tseng discuss opposition to the efforts of CoreCivic and the Trump administration to reopen the CoreCivic prison in Leavenworth.
Hernandez is with the Sisters of Charity Leavenworth, who have been quite vigorous in their opposition to allowing CoreCivic to reopen that facility. Rogers said he was assaulted seven times in the four and a half years he worked at that CoreCivic facility. Three of those assaults “required emergency room visits.”1 Tseng is the Communications Director of the ACLU of Kansas.2
CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), owns and operates prisons and detention centers across the US for various governmental bodies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). They have been the subject of much controversy. The allegations include human rights abuses, mismanagement, inadequate staffing, excessive lobbying, and inadequate cooperation with governmental bodies. In 2016 CCA rebranded itself as CoreCivic, hoping thereby to escape its negative reputation. In 2021 then-President Joe Biden signed an executive order to deny the renewal of a contract between the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) and CoreCivic to house people who had been accused but not convicted of crimes.3
The City of Leavenworth is suing CoreCivic, claiming that during the 30 years that CoreCivic had operated that facility, there had been “multiple widely publicized scandals resulting from its gross mismanagement of the Facility,” which had burdened the City in “countless ways.”1
Sisters of Charity Leavendworth was founded in 1858. It is a member of the Sisters of Charity Federation in the Vincentian-Setonian Tradition. (There are many different “Sisters of Charity” groups, only some of which follow the Vincentian-Setonian tradition.)
This episode of Radio Active Magazine is produced by Spencer Graves.
Copyright 2025 Ashley Hernandez, William Rogers, Esmie Tseng, and Sp