The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is creating a different type of disruption in the town McCook, Nebraska, by making a deal with the Republican governor to take over a work camp and convert it into another undocumented immigrant holding facility.
That led to lawsuits filed by the town's residents.
According to a report from the Washington Post, the state is handing over the Work Ethic Camp in McCook, population 7,212, to DHS with the town being cut out of the approximately $14 million paid by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Aside from the money, the report notes that the town has been long proud of the camp that allowed offenders convicted of minor crimes to receive wages paid by the state as they try and restart their lives by working in the community, and now the camp is being snatched away to become, as Gov. Jim Pillen (R) calls it: “Cornhusker Clink.”
The Post is reporting, “The closure has McCook officials and local nonprofits that depended on the prison labor scrambling to find a new workforce,” with City Manager Nate Schneider adding, “We didn’t ask for this.”
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The Post’s Caroline O'Donovan reported, “In court filings and interviews, McCook residents said they took pride in their relationship with the Work Ethic Camp, which they saw as mutually beneficial. The inmates set up tables at the Salvation Army, renovated the weight room at the YMCA and managed an ‘out-of-control apple orchard,’ according to a lawsuit filed by local residents seeking to stop the takeover of the facility.”
According to Mitch Stone, who once served time in the facility only to get a job there afterward, he admitted he approves of Trump's immigrant round-up, but balked at losing the camp — which has already closed in anticipation of the takeover — and his livelihood, pointing out, “Losing the camp to an ICE detention facility is asinine for this community.”
Local resident Diane Lyons was a fan of the camp in its earlier incarnation and has nothing but contempt for the handover.
“I don’t like the idea of ICE anyway and the things that they’re doing in our nation,” she explained, "and I especially hate the fact that they’re bringing that to our corner of the world.”
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