The number of detainees at Mississippi’s Adams County Correctional Center appears to have nosedived in the past few weeks, leaving several housing units vacant and prompting rumors that the facility was closing, according to many of the people being held there.
But a spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Angelina Vicknair, said this week that the detention center outside Natchez will remain open. In a written statement, she said daily operations continue as normal and that population changes are routine. ICE officials declined to provide the number of people booked in and out in April, the current population of the facility or the number of units currently occupied.
The Adams County facility first caught my attention because it was the second-largest ICE detention center in the country. On April 2, ICE reported that about 2,100 people were being held there, a number that has been more or less consistent over the past few years. In fact, it’s been on the higher end since the Trump administration began its crackdown on immigration.
But Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, told me that, when he visited the center April 9, there were just 1,400 detainees. I had also been speaking to several detainees during this time who all told me that they had been moved out of their original units and consolidated into others. Their original units now lay completely empty, they said, and large groups of detainees were being processed out daily.
A detainee whose friend works in the kitchen told me that they were required to prepare 1,247 meals on Tuesday – suggesting a drop of nearly 1,000 detainees in three weeks.
The number of people booked into ICE detention nationally hasn’t gone down, and the number of deportations in this time period hasn’t increased to a level that would naturally explain such a drastic shift in Adams. The federal government’s continued effort to procure industrial warehouses to hold its increasing number of detainees also suggests the administration still expects to detain large numbers of immigrants, a move several lawmakers have opposed.
Two members of the board of supervisors for Adams County, which is a party to the ICE contract involving the facility, said they hadn’t heard of any changes at Adams. The county administrator, Mitzi Conn, said she was unable to provide any insight because the facility was privately owned.
On Monday, I filed a public records request with the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. Under federal labor law, an employer like CoreCivic, the private prison company that owns and operates the Adams County facility, would be required to submit a written notice if it intends to shut down and lay off its employees. A representative of the department said no such notices had been submitted. In the meantime, I have also been hearing that groups of detainees, albeit small, are still being booked in every day.
As always, please contact me if you have tips or information on the Adams County Correctional Center. I’m continuing to report on it, but you can expect to see fewer stories from me moving forward, as I dig into some topics that will take longer to report. If there are any developments, I’ll be sure to post an update.
Note to our readers: In addition to the population dip, if you know something about the detention center, if you know someone who works there or is detained there, or want me to find out something about it for readers, please get in touch.
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