West Tennessee Detention Facility outreach.

The previously closed West Tennessee Detention Facility in Mason reopened in 2025 as an immigration detention center, and the 600-bed prison is operated by CoreCivic, a for-profit prison company. Despite the efforts of TIRRC’s staff, members, allies, and partners to halt this project, community members across the state are being held at this facility before moving to detention centers in Louisiana. We have countless complaints about the conditions and treatment of those detained. So alongside our partner, Advocates for Immigrant Rights in Memphis, we negotiated to host a training session on navigating your immigration case inside the facility for members of our community currently held in the detention center. Eighty people attended, and the group was found to be largely bond eligible! But bond-eligible cases run against a clock; petitions have to be filed before a person is moved to Louisiana, which is sometimes only a 48-hour window. With scarce legal resources available to these people, our staff was distraught as they left. Through continued advocacy and media presence, we hope to garner more support for this work, and we will continue to conduct training sessions in Mason.