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.”

To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks; The New York Times, November 11, 2025

Elizabeth A. Harris and Alexandra Alter, The New York Times ; To Help SNAP Recipients, Bookstores Set Up as Food Banks

"With federal funding for food stamps threatened, employees at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb., went to their boss with an idea: If people were going hungry, maybe they could help.

Workers at the store, Sower Books, soon set up a food collection bin near the front door. Customers and neighbors brought in bags and boxes of groceries; others came to browse for books, saw the bin and returned later with their own donations. Within a week, the storage room was stuffed with close to 2,000 pounds of food.

Nearly out of storage space, the bookstore put out a call for drivers on social media, and earlier this month, customers volunteered their cars and pickup trucks to ferry boxed and canned goods to a food pantry across town. The store’s back room has since filled up again with donations. On Monday, staff members made another run to the pantry, delivering more than 830 pounds of food — enough for roughly 1,700 meals...

Tory Hall, Sower’s owner, said the food drive felt like a natural extension of the store’s role as a community gathering place, where people drop in to do puzzles, have coffee, attend a book club and snuggle with the store’s adoptable rescue cats. Many customers seemed grateful that Sower gave them an easy way to help, Hall said.

“We’re not sitting here sad that everything is burning,” Hall said. “We’re going to find a fire extinguisher.”"

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."