This Prison Rehabilitated Inmates. Until ICE Paid to Fill It With Immigrants.; The New York Times, December 7, 2025

Allison McCann

Visuals by Cheney Orr

, The New York Times; This Prison Rehabilitated Inmates. Until ICE Paid to Fill It With Immigrants. Over two decades, a minimum-security prison aimed at helping inmates prepare to leave prison was a point of civic pride. Now, state officials have converted it to ICE detention.

[Kip Currier: What a troubling story to see how a Nebraska prison focused on helping inmates to reenter society has been converted to a "black box" detention facility given another derogatory nickname -- Cornhusker Clink -- that, like South Florida's Alligator Alcatraz, degrades the dignity of vulnerable persons.

Yesterday (12/6/25) I attended a Justice and Peace Mass at an Episcopal Church in Western Pennsylvania to pray for and acknowledge the plight of detainees, refugees, and immigrants. We also prayed for "continued blessings on all peacemakers, on leaders who value peace, and on everyone who promotes nonviolent solutions to conflict."

Two sections of the prayers from the Mass are particularly relevant to this story about the converted Nebraska ice facility:

We pray for all immigrants, refugees, and pilgrims from around the world, that they may be welcomed in our midst and be treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. 

God of outcasts and wanderers

Hear our prayer...

We pray for all prisoners and captives; that a spirit of forgiveness may replace vengeance and retribution; and that we, with all the destitute, lonely, and oppressed, may be restored to the fullness of God's grace.

God of absolution and mercy,

Hear our prayer

We also prayed for all those who oversee the persons held within these detention facilities.]

[Excerpt]

"For more than two decades, the prison, known as the Work Ethic Camp, was Nebraska’s only state prison geared solely toward rehabilitation. The facility held nonviolent felony offenders who were nearing the end of their sentences and prepared them, with counseling, schooling and job training, to return to the outside world.

That changed this fall, after state officials announced that the Work Ethic Camp would be replaced with a 300-bed, high security Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center to support President Trump’s national crackdown on illegal immigration.

And so a place that had been devoted to second chances now had a very different mission, and a new name to go with it: “The Cornhusker Clink.”

Cornhusker copyright? Getting the facts on the name of Nebraska's new ICE detention facility; KETV, August 20, 2025

  

Waverle Monroe, KETV; Cornhusker copyright? Getting the facts on the name of Nebraska's new ICE detention facility

[Kip Currier: How crass and unnecessarily demeaning it is for ICE to use the name Cornhusker Clink to refer to a detention facility. This administration, unsurprisingly given its past actions, continues to be more focused on alliterative branding and merchandising opportunities (recall Alligator Alcatraz) than modeling professionalism in the ways it communicates a commitment to treating all detainees with dignity and respect.]

[Excerpt]

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security dubbed the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility as the "Cornhusker Clink." 

You can't hear the word Cornhusker without thinking of the University of Nebraska.

Many on social media questioned the legality of using the name Cornhusker for the facility. Now KETV is helping you get the facts."