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The Tennessee Conservative [By Paula Gomes] –
A West Tennessee Township, in rural Tipton County, voted on Tuesday to approve reopening a closed prison to be used for Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE).
Officials voted on two separate contracts, one between Mason Township and ICE and another between the municipality and longtime Tennessee prison contractor CoreCivic despite vocal protests from activists and disgruntled community members during the contentious public meeting that was called to specifically deal with the contracts.
The meeting was held in a fire station garage, with the five-member board of Mason aldermen, as well as Mayor Eddie Noeman and Vice-Mayor Reynaldo Givhan discussing the proposal for Brentwood-based CoreCivic to convert the West Tennessee Detention Facility into an ICE detention facility.
The prison, owned by CoreCivic since 1990, was closed in 2021 after the Biden administration cancelled contracts with private prison contractors.
The Executive Order that former President Joe Biden signed in January 2021 forbade the attorney general from renewing any contracts between the Justice Department and privately-owned criminal detention facilities. The contract between the U.S. Marshals Service and CoreCivic that was responsible for the operation of Mason’s facility expired months later, at the end of September of that year.
The roughly 500 prisoners that were being held at the prison were then transferred over to the Shelby County Jail, while West Tennessee Detention Facility staff were given the chance to transfer to other prisons still under CoreCivic’s supervision.
While both contracts were approved during the meeting, there’s no word on when the center might reopen.
CoreCivic, the second-largest private prison operator in the United States has seen an increase in contracts for immigration detention centers recently and expects to see more since Republican legislation passed which provides billions of dollars for ICE and its overseeing agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Mayor Eddie Noeman welcomes the reopening of the facility for the economic benefits it will bring to Mason, specifically jobs, and income that will help the town pay for infrastructure projects. The prison was the town’s biggest employer when it was open. Mason has a population of approximately 1,300 people and is located 45-minutes northeast of the City of Memphis.
The town would receive an administrative fee of $1.00 a day, per detainee held at the facility. There are two other ICE centers at present in the state, with neither in West Tennessee.
According to CoreCivic, the conversion of the facility into an ICE detention center will bring almost 240 jobs to Mason. The company is advertising for detention officers with a pay rate of $26.50 an hour and has seen over 2,100 applications from people in the area.
“To me, that says a lot about the hole that was left in the community when the contract ended in 2021 and what the desire is for good paying jobs with good benefits that people have been missing,” said CoreCivic spokesman Brian Todd.
Board member Virginia Rivers was not in support of the plan, telling the Associated Press that she doesn’t like what ICE “stands for.”
“At the end of the day, we’re trying to take care of our city, of our citizens,” stated Noeman. “It’s nothing personal about any immigrant.”
CoreCivic has seen much criticism over the years in how it runs its facilities with the state comptroller releasing damning audits in 2017, 2020, and 2023. In its defense, the private prison operator has brought up problems that all prisons are facing to both hire and retain staff.
Still, CoreCivic has been fined by the state’s corrections agency for understaffing violations across four Tennessee prisons to the tune of $44.7 million.
Earlier this year, Governor Bill Lee signed legislation allowing the Tennessee Department of Correction to remove 10 percent of a private prison’s population should the prisoner death rate reach twice that of the average rate of death in Tennessee prisons.
According to the Tennessean, 529 inmates died in general population prisons within a three-year span, between 2020 and 2023. Of these, 162 deaths occurred in a medical unit prison. Despite CoreCivic housing less than 39 percent of Tennessee’s overall prison population during that time, over 50 percent of the deaths happened in one of their facilities.
In June, Trousdale County District Attorney Jason Lawson called for the largest prison in the state, the Trousdale Turner Correctional Center, run by CoreCivic, to be turned over to state control following riots at the Hartsville prison.
Lawson said that the proposed change in management was “long overdue” and that the Tennessee Department of Corrections would do a better job than the privately-owned prison management company.
During the night riot, three guards were taken hostage by inmates during lockdown which led to several law enforcement agencies converging on the prison.
Governor Bill Lee has called CoreCivic an “important partner” to the state.
The prison operator gave $69,000 just to Lee’s campaign alone, which included funds to hold an inauguration ceremony. Since 2019, CoreCivic has spent over three million on lobbying and donations to Tennessee lawmakers, making it one of the state’s top twenty-five political spenders.
Additional Sources:
https://twitter.com/ericldaugh/status/1955631825063493819?s=46
https://wreg.com/news/local/ice-detention-facility-may-open-in-mason-tn
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/13/tennessee-ice-detention-center-mason
https://www.thecentersquare.com/tennessee/article_010b6500-cb2d-4d16-b641-da617b379b0d.html
About the Author: Paula Gomes is a Tennessee resident and reporter for The Tennessee Conservative. You can reach Paula at paula@tennesseeconservativenews.com.
