An Arizona town is dreading plans to turn its prison into an ICE facility: It's morally objectionable'

"In an Arizona town where farmers have long wrested a living off the arid land, reports that a former prison complex may be turned into an immigration detention center have sparked a fierce backlash, with residents seeing the potential transition as the latest undesirable symbol of the Trump administration's massive escalation of immigration enforcement. The facility in Marana, a town of about 63,700 people located north of Tucson, sprawls across a flat expanse of desert studded with scrubby bushes and hardy trees."

"It was shuttered almost two years ago, and the Management and Training Corporation, the private company that owns it, informed the town manager of company plans to operate a detention center in the prison. During a town hall meeting on 23 October, residents crowded into a school auditorium to learn more from representatives of local government and advocacy organizations about the plan. Many attenders spoke against the jailing of immigrants amid Donald Trump's crusade to deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible."

"Karla Jones, one of the attenders, said she abhorred the idea of having a nearby detention center to hold immigrants whose only crime in many cases is lacking US legal status, a civil offense for extended periods of time. That's breaking up families, she said. And it's people who are paying taxes, it's people who are working. So I don't want my community to support that."

A former prison complex in Marana, Arizona, faces conversion into an immigration detention center, provoking strong local opposition. The closed facility sits north of Tucson on a desert expanse and was shuttered almost two years earlier. Management and Training Corporation, which owns the site, informed the town manager of plans to operate a detention center there. Hundreds of residents attended a town hall to hear details and voice objections, citing family separations and the detention of taxpaying, working community members. Federal legislation allocated $45bn to ICE to expand detention capacity as part of a $75bn, four-year package, and the government is relying on for-profit prison operators to meet that demand.

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