With the purchase of the CoreCivic detention facility by the U.S. Government, it’s high time the City of Leavenworth stop meddling in the nation’s immigration enforcement, and instead take pride in that mission.
Yes – this should end the political theater over whether Leavenworth City Hall gets to micromanage federal immigration enforcement through zoning regulations, advisory boards and a special-use permit. This is not an apartment complex, a convenience store or somebody wanting to put a hog barn beside a subdivision. It is a federally owned detention facility being used to carry out federal immigration law.
This week the federal government purchased the 1,033-bed Midwest Regional Reception Center. It’s no longer simply a privately-owned prison operating under contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The $238.4 million deal anticipates CoreCivic to continue operating it for ICE.
Leavenworth – and Kansas – should be proud to be a part of this national security mission. The prison now belongs to the United States government and Leavenworth should act accordingly. The same basic constitutional principle that prevents a town from deciding how Fort Leavenworth will conduct military operations should prevent local politicians from believing they are entitled to supervise ICE detention policy. Federal installations don’t ordinarily operate at the pleasure of city zoning boards.
Under the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause and the related doctrine of intergovernmental immunity, federal installations are generally protected from direct state or local regulation unless Congress has authorized that regulation. The U.S. Department of Justice has described the rule this way: activities of federal installations are shielded from direct state regulation absent “clear and unambiguous” congressional authorization.
That distinction is especially important because Leavenworth won its earlier court fight when CoreCivic owned the property as a private corporation. The Kansas Court of Appeals specifically dealt with a private company attempting to reactivate its privately owned detention center and upheld the temporary requirement that CoreCivic obtain a special-use permit. The United States now owns it. The deal has changed.
Even federal regulations recognize the significance of that dividing line. In one context involving federal buildings, regulations expressly distinguish between privately owned space leased by the government and federally owned property: when the facility is federally owned, federal preemption principles apply.
ICE ARREST CRIMINAL ILLEGAL CONVICTING OF CHILD RAPE
So Leavenworth officials ought to resist the temptation to invent another round of jurisdictional trench warfare. In fact, the federal government was already warning them about this before Washington owned the building. Last September, the Justice Department entered CoreCivic’s federal lawsuit and accused Leavenworth of an “aggressive and unlawful” effort to interfere with federal immigration enforcement. DOJ said the federal government had a strong interest in preventing local governments from harassing federal contractors and interfering with operations protected by the Supremacy Clause.
Now, Uncle Sam owns the place outright.
Leavenworth commissioners certainly have every right to advocate for their citizens. They can communicate with ICE. They can raise concerns about emergency-service costs. They can demand that Washington be a responsible neighbor. But there is an enormous difference between communicating with the federal government and pretending a municipal permit gives City Hall operational authority over a federal detention center.
CITY OF LEAVENWORTH STATEMENT ON SALE OF CORECIVIC FACILITY
This is nothing short of a patriotic duty – one Leavenworth and the Sunflower State at large should embrace. The Biden Administration’s open border policy allowed untold millions of illegals into the country – many of them criminal miscreants who treated the United States like their own predatory playground raping, murdering and robbing as if they were still living in their own lawless native countries. Those who aren’t violent are likewise taking U.S. assets in welfare and other services to which only legal citizens should be entitled. Anyone who fulfills a role in combating this onslaught – ICE agents themselves or communities who assist them – are unsung heroes turning back a legitimate invasion of our homeland.
Europe offers a warning about what happens when governments lose confidence in enforcing borders and assimilation. The Islamic migration crisis brought hundreds of thousands of irregular border crossings in individual years and enormous strains on asylum, housing and integration systems. Even after irregular crossings declined 38 percent in 2024, Frontex still counted more than 239,000 detections at the European Union’s external borders. Europol’s July 2026 terrorism assessment found that jihadist terrorism accounted for 24 of the EU’s 45 terrorist attacks in 2025 and 347 of its 486 terrorism-related arrests. America has no obligation to repeat Europe’s mistakes.
President Trump was elected promising to restore immigration enforcement. That requires locating people subject to removal, arresting them where authorized by law, providing the process required by law, detaining people when appropriate and ultimately removing those whom the law says must leave.
Kansas and the residents of Leavenworth should be proud to help.
