Bait & Switch: The Battle For Leavenworth

Bait & Switch: The Battle for Leavenworth is a fast-moving nonfiction account of how a local zoning dispute in Leavenworth, Kansas, grew into a much larger confrontation involving CoreCivic, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security, the courts, and the limits of local government authority.

For decades, the detention facility at 100 Highway Terrace was part of Leavenworth's correctional landscape. Operated by CoreCivic and previously used to house federal detainees, the facility closed at the end of 2021 after its contract with the U.S. Marshals Service expired. For several years, the building remained empty.

Then ICE came calling.

In early 2025, CoreCivic moved to reactivate the more than 1,000-bed facility for federal immigration detention. The company initially applied for a special-use permit from the City of Leavenworth, only to withdraw the application weeks later and take the position that no new permit was required.

The city disagreed.

What followed was more than a political disagreement. Leavenworth adopted Resolution B-2394, declared that CoreCivic's previous detention use had been discontinued long enough to require new approval, and went to court to stop the facility from reopening without a permit. The legal battle moved through federal and state courts, eventually resulting in an injunction preventing CoreCivic from housing detainees until it complied with the city's permitting process.

CoreCivic ultimately returned to City Hall.

After public hearings, intense debate, and months of controversy, the Leavenworth City Commission approved a three-year special-use permit in March 2026. The approval came with seventeen conditions covering oversight, inspections, operational standards, accreditation requirements, and the creation of a Community Relations Advisory Board designed to give local officials and residents greater visibility into what happened behind the facility's fences.

Detainees began arriving two days later.

For a brief period, the fight appeared settled.

Then, on August 5, 2026, CoreCivic announced that it had sold the Leavenworth detention facility directly to the United States government through the Department of Homeland Security for $238.4 million.

The city said it learned of the completed transaction that morning.

Suddenly, the central question changed.

Leavenworth had spent more than a year fighting to establish local oversight over a privately owned detention facility. Now the property belonged to the federal government, raising new questions about whether the conditions the city had negotiated could still be enforced.

Was it simply a major federal real-estate transaction?

Or had Leavenworth fought for a seat at the table only to discover that the table itself could be taken away?

Drawing from court decisions, city records, government statements, corporate disclosures, public meetings, contemporary reporting, and the author's own perspective as a Leavenworth resident interviewed about the sale, Bait & Switch reconstructs the sequence of events behind one of the city's most consequential modern disputes.

This is not a book about telling readers what to believe about immigration.

It is a story about power, property, corporate strategy, federal authority, and what happens when a city discovers there may be limits to how much control it truly has inside its own borders.