Plans to build the first privately run immigration detention center in Wisconsin are off the table — at least for now — part of a larger trend in which companies that build them are being encouraged by federal officials but resisted at the state and local level.

For at least a year, Virginia-based Immigration Centers of America wanted to build a 500-bed detention center in St. Croix County. The company said it would generate more than 200 full-time jobs and millions of dollars in state and local tax revenue.

However, earlier this month it withdrew its proposal to build in New Richmond. The city's staff had issued a report recommending officials reject the application for rezoning and related ordinance changes, saying the project didn’t fit in the city’s development plan. In addition, public outcry over the plan was fierce, with residents opposing the detention of immigrants, and expressing concerns about property values and use of tax dollars.

The company also dropped a plan to build the center in Baldwin, about 20 miles from New Richmond, after months of discussions behind closed doors. A big stumbling block was the cost of infrastructure improvements to serve the center, but there were other issues as well.

Immigration Centers of America's experience in St. Croix County echoes what is happening elsewhere in the country.

The federal government is trying to open centers amid a crush of individuals from Central America seeking asylum, and an increase in arrests of immigrants living in the U.S. by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The number of detainees has rapidly increased since fiscal year 2016, when ICE held an average of 34,376 immigrants on any given day. The average for this fiscal year, as of March, was 45,155, said ICE spokeswoman Nicole Alberico.

And yet, even in counties like St. Croix that voted for Donald Trump and would seem to welcome expanded immigration detention, plans have not worked out.

Immigration Centers of America, which owns a detention facility in Virginia, also has been trying to secure two multimillion-dollar federal contracts to open detention centers in Illinois and Michigan.

The company has run into opposition there, too.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer canceled earlier this year the sale of a shuttered state prison in Ionia that the company hoped to use as a detention center, saying the company couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t be holding adults separated from their children at the border. ICA spokesman John Truscott said the company is looking at other options near Detroit.

In Illinois, the Village of Dwight board voted in favor of the company’s request to annex a property where they plan to build a 1,200-bed immigration detention center in March despite the opposition of immigrant advocates. But the plan may yet be blocked, as state lawmakers are pushing for legislation banning private detention centers. The bill passed the Illinois House in early April.

Fred Tsao, with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrants and Refugee Rights, said immigrant detention is cruel and unnecessary. “One can make a detention facility as nice as you can, but it’s still a jail, it’s still a prison,” he said.

Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior fellow in the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, said private detention centers may have some support because of the jobs that they can bring to some communities. However, she said, President Donald Trump’s rhetoric of associating immigrants and crime may have helped spread an unfounded fear of detention centers and crime.

“Ironically, their rhetoric may be getting in the way of their plans,” she said of the Trump administration.

Mark Fleming, associate director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said the vast majority of detained immigrants don’t pose a risk of flight or could be prevented from fleeing through other means.

Months of preparation

The New Richmond discussions had been in the works since at least April 2018.

The talks were facilitated by John Hiller, a former Gov. Scott Walker adviser and consultant for Trump’s campaign, according to emails obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Hiller didn’t return phone calls made to his real estate business, or an email asking about his role in the project. Truscott said Hiller is a consultant and that his real estate expertise would help the company.

Emails show Hiller told New Richmond city staff that minors wouldn’t be detained at the center and that the project would create full-time jobs with a starting pay of $23.84.

New Richmond city staff gathered information for the project, analyzing the city’s water and sewer system capacity to serve the center and researching other possible locations. Mike Darrow, the city administrator, sent Hiller and two company representatives a draft of the news release that announced the rezoning request in advance.

Darrow said it's common for city staff to address questions from potential developers. The staff, he said, was doing its due diligence to understand a proposal that it made public as soon as it received a formal rezoning application. The staff told the company that the process would be transparent and that any location would need to meet the policies outlined in the city's development plan, he said.

Truscott said city staff initially recommended the site for the detention center and that's why the company pursued it.

"When that staff came back later and said it wasn’t the ideal location, ICA chose not to fight it and withdrew," he said. "ICA is not going to force an issue on a local municipality."

Blois Olson, spokesman for the City of New Richmond, contradicted Truscott, saying the staff did not recommend the site.

Knocking on doors

After the plans were made public in early April, a wave of public anxiety spread through the area.

St. Croix County Supervisor Daniel Hansen, who represents some New Richmond wards, was one of the first to organize opposition against the center. He said he believes it is immoral to incarcerate those who are fleeing their country and trying to seek refuge in the U.S.

“I feel it’s inhumane to treat an asylum-seeker like a criminal,” he said.

He contacted a couple of advocacy groups, ordered some signs opposing the project and prepared a list of reasons why he thought the project would be bad for the city.

Hansen knocked on doors, called friends and reached out to others to build a campaign. He said both Democrats and Republicans were against the project. Some opposed immigrants’ incarceration; a few supported detaining them, but not in their community.

Groups around Wisconsin were also organizing against the project. The American Civil Liberties Union-Wisconsin supported the opposition efforts and immigrant advocacy group Voces de la Frontera was getting ready to send a delegation to New Richmond.

“This is a for-profit business that is making money out of discrimination and breaking up families and our economy,” Christine Neumann-Ortiz, the group’s executive director, said before the proposal was withdrawn. “This has no place in Wisconsin.”

New Richmond Ald. Scottie Ard said she lost count of the number of calls she received opposing the project.

“Most of the callers had not only a moral objection to a detention center, but they also have the objection that this is not what we want our community to be known for,” she said.

Family separation

Michael Light, associate professor of sociology and Chicano/Latino studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said he is not surprised to see that level of public opposition. He said general views on immigration crackdown are linked now to the family separation policy, which Democrats unanimously oppose and Republicans are split on.

“The family separation issue galvanized many people,” he said.

Denise L. Gilman, clinical professor at the University of Texas Law School, said that even in more conservative areas, residents also may be wary of spending tax dollars in a way that benefits private companies but can harm their community or its image.

Eisen, with the Brennan Center for Justice, sees in the opposition a parallel with attitudes toward prisons. Despite a decades-long push for more punitive laws and harsher sentences, she said, many balk at the prospect of having a prison in their community.

“No one wants prisons in their backyard,” she said.

'Many, many reasons'

As for the Baldwin proposal, Village President Willy Zevenbergen said the company came forward with a proposal that was discussed behind closed doors for months.

Truscott said the problem in Baldwin was that its sewer system was insufficient to serve the center and the village wasn't willing to pay $8 million to $10 million for infrastructure upgrades that would be needed.

"There was no rejection — it was lack of infrastructure at the site," Truscott said in an email. "ICA didn't pursue as a result." He said the company wasn't aware of any other issues.

Zevenbergen said the infrastructure costs were an important point, but there were "many, many reasons" why the village decided the project wasn't a good fit.

After the most recent failure in New Richmond, the company’s chief operating officer, Duane Ragsdale, said in a statement there wasn't enough time to put together another site and meet ICE's deadline for proposals. As a result, he argued, detainees would be faring worse.

“Immigrants being detained in Wisconsin and Minnesota will be forced to remain incarcerated in local and county jails while awaiting their time in immigration court, rather than in a facility more suitable for those being held on civil charges,” Ragsdale said.

But Immigration Centers of America has faced issues at its existing location in Farmville, Virginia.

After one of the center’s detainees died of liver failure in October 2011, an ICE report stated staff should have taken him to a hospital earlier. The report, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act request, also said the detainee, Anibal Ramirez-Ramirez, hadn’t seen a physician despite dry heaves and vomiting episodes and his combative behavior.

Truscott said the detainee was transferred to a hospital fairly soon after arriving at the center and only a liver transplant could have saved him.

A few months before the death, an inspection by ICE’s Office of Detention Oversight had stated that the staff level was insufficient to meet detainees’ health care needs.

Further, an ICE inspection about the time of the death found the center didn’t meet multiple standards. The report, obtained by the National Immigrant Justice Center through an FOIA request, cited deficiencies such as an inadequate number of toilet facilities and showers and inadequate access to legal materials for some detainees.

In another incident, this one in 2015, immigrants were served food that contained larvae. ICA’s management initially blamed detainees working in the kitchen, but the food had arrived at the center contaminated.

Truscott said that in five of the past six years, the center hasn’t had any deficiencies.