AUSTIN - A controversial proposal to turn a closed state school in Corsicana into a federal immigration center to house undocumented minors from Central America was derailed Friday after Texas' Juvenile Justice Department's governing board rejected the plan.

By a vote of 8-1, the board turned back the plan promoted by Corsicana city officials to house up to 800 foreign youths at the site, in what they said could bring up to 1,100 jobs to the Navarro County community about 55 miles south of Dallas.

State officials, led by Gov. Greg Abbott, state Sen. Brian Birdwell of Granbury and other lawmakers, had urged the board not to approve the transfer of the facility to the city of Corsicana. While part of the opposition was because they opposed federal immigration policies, other officials opposed the transfer as a bad deal for Texas taxpayers because the state still is paying off millions of dollars in construction bonds on the facility, which closed in 2013.

Juvenile justice facility

Calvin Stephens of Dallas cast the lone vote in favor of the plan at a meeting in Austin, where more than a dozen opponents urged the board not to approve the transfer.

The Corsicana State School, which once housed more than 200 youths in state custody for committing crimes, was closed as part of a downsizing of the juvenile justice agency. The center housed youths with serious mental health issues, many of whom had been the victims of sexual abuse.

Corsicana officials recently signed a tentative deal with a New York firm, Cayuga Home for Children, to operate a transitional housing center for undocumented minors.

Under its proposal, the city would have gotten title to the center for free, and would have leased it to a private firm for $3,000 a month.

"This facility has been in Corsicana for more than 100 years ... as a place to help children," Corsicana Mayor Chuck McClanahan said last week. "We think our proposal would ... be a good use. The only difference is that these are foreign children."

Birdwell, who represents Corsicana, had been an outspoken critic of the plan.

"I do not support a taxpayer-funded property being used as a revolving-door facility for illegal immigrants," Birdwell wrote in a July 8 letter to McClanahan and Davenport. "Regardless of how attractive the limited, short-term benefit such use of the TJJD property the federal government alleges will be provided to the city and/or county, I will not validate the mass influx of immigrants into a county I represent. ... I will not be complicit in assisting the federal government in its willful malfeasance of the enforcement of immigration law."

McClanahan and other local supporters said the opponents are misinformed. Most of the children who would be housed at the center would stay for only 15 to 35 days, they said.

"Most of them would go from here to live with relatives and loved ones," the mayor said. "They would get clothes, all their shots. Only 10 percent would stay in Texas. These are children who show up at the border unaccompanied. They have to go someplace."

'Public interest'

Advocates for the federal resettlement for the undocumented minors for months have pushed for sites to be opened in Texas and for more youths to be transitioned into resettlement here, since Texas is a border state where many of them enter from Mexico and where privately funded programs have been active resettling refugees from other countries.

Supporters also note that when the state youth lockups closed, a provision was inserted in state law to allow local governments to get the closed properties deeded to them for free if they were used "to benefit the public interest of the state." Officials in Beaumont and Crockett took ownership of former lockups to lease them to private vendors.

"We were told that if the City of Corsicana found a good use, that would be good," McClanahan said. "We think this is a good purpose."