Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s latest branded holding camp for immigrants could open as soon as this weekend after a federal judge denied a request to block it.
Activists in Nebraska are suing to thwart a plan to convert the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services’ Work Ethic Camp into an immigrant jail the feds have nicknamed the “Cornhusker Clink.”
As the Trump administration has promoted its bigoted mass incarceration and deportation agenda, its conservative allies have tried to popularize — and even market — nicknames they’ve assigned to various immigrant jails. The camp in Nebraska joins the center in Florida that Republicans branded as “Alligator Alcatraz” and the “Louisiana Lockup,” a maximum-security prison that was once a slave plantation that Kristi Noem praised for its brutal history.
On Monday, District Court Judge Patrick Heng allowed the lawsuit to move forward but refused to issue an injunction on the project after determining that Republican Gov. Jim Pillen had acted within his rights to enter a contract with the feds.
According to the Nebraska Examiner:
Heng … ruled that Pillen and Rob Jeffreys, director of the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, did not violate the Nebraska Constitution or state law by entering into a Sept. 30 contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to convert the state’s Work Ethic Camp in McCook into a regional ICE detention center. ICE certified the facility last week, Pillen announced Thursday.
Heng’s ruling gives Pillen and the feds the green light to open the ICE facility this weekend. The governor previously said he expected the facility to be up and running by Nov. 1.
