KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The U.S. Department of Justice filed a “Statement of Interest” Tuesday in an ongoing federal lawsuit over plans to open a detention facility for immigration detainees in Leavenworth.
The Sept. 23 filing was made in a lawsuit filed earlier this year by the for-profit detention company CoreCivic against officials in Leavenworth.
LINK | Read the government’s Statement of Interest
At issue is CoreCivic’s plans to reopen its detention facility at 100 Highway Terrace in Leavenworth.
The company had previously operated the facility but stopped housing detainees in 2021. Earlier this year, the company announced plans to reopen the facility as a location to house immigration detainees. However, CoreCivic ran into a roadblock with city officials, who said the company needed to obtain a special use permit.
RELATED | Legal battle between CoreCivic, City of Leavenworth has town residents talking
Department of Justice officials Brett Shumate, Drew Ensign, Anthony Nicastro and John Inkeles said in Tuesday’s filing that the city’s special use permit requirement violates the Supremacy Clause and asked the judge in the case to side with CoreCivic and the government.
“The United States submits this Statement of Interest to address an aggressive and unlawful effort by the City of Leavenworth, Kansas, to interfere with federal immigration enforcement,” the filing reads.
Such statements seek to provide the court with a framework to assess claims made by the plaintiffs. They also establish the DOJ’s position on the topic.
District Court Judge Toby Crouse held a scheduling conference in the case on Wednesday in Topeka. Wednesday’s conference set additional deadlines for the filing of briefs for both sides in October.
The parties are set to return for a hearing on Nov. 25.
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