LANSING – A vacant prison in Baldwin may reopen as an ICE detention facility, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU said its freedom of information request revealed that the former North Lake Correctional Facility is being considered for use to detain immigrants.

The facility is owned by the Florida-based GEO Group, the federal government’s largest contractor of private prisons.

The prison had a capacity of 1,800 and was closed in 2022. It is located in Lake County.

Eunice Cho is a senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s National Prison Project.

“These records only further confirm ICE’s work to expand immigration detention across the country, including in facilities with clear records of abuse, and in areas where immigration detention has not previously existed,” Cho said.

She said the ACLU is monitoring the situation.

The prison served as a “criminal alien requirement facility” which is a prison that specifically houses people convicted of “criminal immigration related violation,” she said.

Lake County is one of the poorest counties in Michigan, with a poverty rate of around 20%. In 2019, the prison had filled only 69 of approximately 300 staff positions.

According to the the nonprofit Marshall Project based in New York CIty, there were reports of high turnover and low pay.

Andrew Free, an immigration rights lawyer in Atlanta, represented clients at a number of former GEO Group prisons and detention centers.

“It’s unclear whether ICE is going to want to do a new dedicated contract with [GEO Group]and whether they’re going to run headlong into putting people into Bureau of Prisons facilities,” he said “We don’t truly know because there’s very little public transparency.”

In 2019, the prison was at the center of a sex abuse lawsuit. In 2020, more than 100 prisoners went on a hunger strike to protest conditions during COVID.

Sgt. Keith Bartram of the Lake County Sheriff’s Department said that he was not aware of any attempts to reopen the prison.

The Detroit ICE office and the GEO group did not respond to requests for comment.