The Department of Homeland Security has just announced a partnership with the state of Nebraska for a new migrant detention center. By converting a work camp in McCook into a detention facility, Nebraska will house up to 280 migrants in what is being dubbed the “Cornhusker Clink.” In a statement, Gov. Jim Pillen (R) said, “This is about keeping Nebraskans — and Americans across the country — safe.”
Pillen is taking his state down a troubling path, raising both legal and logistical issues. There is already confusion about who will be held in the new facility.
Legally, it is unclear whether Pillen has the authority to open the facility. Under Nebraska’s state constitution, the legislature has exclusive authority in the “general management, control and government of all state charitable, mental, reformatory and penal institutions.” This has been the law since 1875. So Pillen’s unilateral decision to enter a partnership with Homeland Security for a detention center may not rest on sound legal grounds.
The remote location chosen for the facility will almost certainly lead to staffing issues, and to violations of the due process rights of detainees, such as the right to access counsel. These circumstances in turn will likely result in lawsuits, as we have seen in another state-run immigration facility, “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida. After civil rights and environmental groups sued the state over conditions there, a federal judge ordered the facility shut down.
The Cornhusker Clink is logistically problematic because it will be housing nearly 300 detainees in a site designed for 200 people. Plus, several hundred current inmates will need to be moved to other facilities, in a state beset by chronic prison overcrowding. The nonpartisan Prison Policy Initiative reports that Nebraska locks up a higher percentage of its people than almost any other democratic country on earth. And Pillen wants to imprison more people?
It is troubling that the governor seems inconsistent about who will be held in the Cornhusker Clink. He has stated that the facility will hold “criminals and terrorists” and MS-13 gang members. Yet he has also said that the Clink will house low- to minimum-security detainees. When asked if families or children would be held in the Clink, Pillen said that he was “not a politician” and has “not thought about that.”
The fact that the governor cannot keep his story straight, or doesn’t know basic information about the detainees to be housed in his state, is a red flag. It suggests a lack of clear direction for this project.
A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said that “criminal illegal aliens” will be detained in the Cornhusker Clink. Secretary Kristi Noem said that the facility will be used to “help remove the worst of the worst out of our country.” These assertions are contradicted by immigration arrest data. According to the research site Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, 70 percent of people in immigration detention have no criminal convictions. These national statistics were mirrored in a June immigration enforcement action in Omaha. Most of the people arrested in that workplace raid turned out to have no criminal records, or only traffic violations and misdemeanors.
The reaction in Nebraska to news about the Cornhusker Clink has not been great. State politicians weighed in on predictably partisan lines. Meanwhile, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, whose football team is the Cornhuskers, was quick to distance itself from the facility. An online poll by a Nebraska television station found that 75 percent of respondents do not support using the McCook facility to house undocumented immigrants. Nebraskans have lined up to protest the planned center, with signs reading “No Auschwitz on the Prairie.” Residents in McCook are worrying about how the facility will affect them, and one local columnist wrote, “I fail to see even a speck of humor in the label Cornhusker Clink.”
Oh yes, that label — a combination of Nebraska’s renown as the Cornhusker State and an old slang term for jail. This name itself is offensive. Immigration detention is a serious matter, not something to be branded like a theme park. “Cornhusker Clink” is a dehumanizing term, because it makes light of vulnerable people in prison-like conditions.
Pillen’s embrace of a new detention center can be viewed as a Republican governor going along with policies favored by a Republican administration. But Gallup, CNN and other polling find that most Americans no longer favor harsh immigration policies. And the Cornhusker Clink is a misstep for Nebraska, which has a significant labor shortage. Immigrants, including the undocumented, are part of the backbone of the state’s agricultural and processing industries. As the Clink begins locking up migrants, it will tear communities apart, sending the message that Nebraska is not welcoming to immigrants and their families. How sad that one of Nebraska’s best-known monikers will now be associated with suffering.
The Cornhusker Clink is a political stunt that will harm Nebraska’s workforce and its reputation. Gov. Pillen must reconsider his support for this divisive, unnecessary project.
Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and contributor to NBC Latino and CNN Opinion.
