Last night, Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson of Gary, Indiana, announced that private, for-profit prison company GEO Group has formally withdrawn its request to rezone land to build an 800-bed immigration detention center. Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) commends community groups, including the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations, Black Lives Matter, and the Mass Incarceration + GEO Halt Team (MIGHT), for their powerful efforts to force GEO to drop their proposal.GEO’s effort in Gary is the fourth failed attempt to build a private immigration detention center in the Chicagoland area. As we celebrate this latest victory, we are acutely aware that private prison companies like GEO will continue to disingenuously market themselves as an economic solution for communities facing fiscal crises. We hope that local leaders will follow the moral leadership that Mayor Freeman demonstrated last week when she withdrew her support for GEO’s detention center, recognizing that our communities are strongest when we invest in systems that respect human dignity rather than profit off of oppression and the destruction of families.
NIJC, which provides legal services to hundreds of immigrants in Northwest Indiana, is proud to have been among the chorus of voices calling on the City of Gary to reject the proposed prison. Given the many failed attempts by private prison companies to build prisons in our communities, we hope that companies like GEO have gotten our message loud and clear: The Midwest is closed for business with private prison companies.