Nebraska will be paid a base rate of roughly $2.5 million a month to run the McCook Work Ethic Camp as a detention center for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
That and other details are contained in the contract between Nebraska and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which the state made public on Friday.
However, more than a dozen McCook residents and a former Nebraska state senator filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop the camp from being used as an ICE detention facility. A hearing on that lawsuit is scheduled for Oct. 24.
In the first year of the contract, which began Sept. 30, Nebraska will be paid about $269 per detainee by ICE. In the second year, the monthly rate goes up to $2.5 million, or roughly $277 per detainee.
In a release, Nebraska Governor Jim Pillen said use of the facility as a federal detention center will save the state substantial money. The facility was originally built to house 200 inmates but is being expanded to hold as many as 300.
Pillen has said he expects the prison to be ready to accept detainees by Nov. 1, and both men and women can be held there.
Additionally, the director of the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights group in Nebraska resigned Thursday.
Elsa Aranda announced her resignation from the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) days after a dispute with the organization’s national leadership. The conflict is tied to a proposed partnership between the Douglas County jail and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
