Mason, Tennessee — The small West Tennessee town of Mason, just 2 square miles in size, is home to about 1,000 people. But its residents are now divided by what a new immigration detention facility will mean for the area.
Shannon Whitfield has lived in Mason for 13 years. Earlier this month, Mason’s town leaders voted to reopen a shuttered private prison, the West Tennessee Detention Facility, and turn it into a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center.
“This is not the place for an ICE facility. This is not the place for a for-profit prison,” Whitfield told CBS News.
Mason experienced years of financial problems, including allegations of corruption and mismanagement more than a decade ago that left the town with a mountain of debt and few businesses left to help it bounce back.
The West Tennessee Detention Facility has been closed for nearly four years. When it reopens, it has about 600 beds that could soon be filled with ICE detainees.
The private for-profit prison company that owns it, CoreCivic, says the prison will create more than 200 new jobs and boost revenue for Mason and the state of Tennessee through hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes and impact fees, which are fees that developers pay to municipalities.
That is why Mason Mayor Eddie Noeman says he supports the detention center. But town Alderwoman Virginia Rivers voted against it.
“I need it to be clear I am all for jobs coming to town of Mason,” Rivers told CBS News. “What I’m not for is when it comes to mistreating the people. All money is not good money.”
Immediately after taking office in January, President Trump reversed a policy instituted by former President Joe Biden in 2021 that prevented the Justice Department from renewing contracts with private prison firms. CoreCivic also owned the West Tennessee Detention Facility at the time and was forced to close it in 2021 because of Biden’s executive order.
In a statement on the reopening of the prison, CoreCivic said it was “proud to continue our long-standing relationship within the Mason and Tipton County community, going back nearly 35 years,” and adding that it did not “have a timeline to share regarding when the facility will become operational.”
CoreCivic is the largest private, for-profit prison firm in the U.S., and the sole private prison operator in Tennessee. However, CoreCivic has repeatedly been found in Tennessee state audits to be deficient in staffing and turnover.
A CBS News analysis of Tennessee state data released earlier this summer showed that inmates are twice as likely to be killed in CoreCivic prisons compared to government-run prisons. CoreCivic has disputed that analysis.
“The ICE facility is not, does not and will not help Mason to go forward,” Rivers said. “We need other things in our community. We need homes. We need a school, day care.”
West Tennessee could potentially see other businesses, like Ford, bring new jobs to the area in the future, but that would not be for several years. Until then, Mason remains at a crossroads.
“I don’t want my neighbors to go to work out there,” Whitfield said. “I don’t want them to have to make that choice of, to get benefits and to get enough money. They have to give away that piece of their soul.”
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