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.”

Why Management Training Doesn’t Work; Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/15/13

David Evans, Chronicle of Higher Education; Why Management Training Doesn’t Work: "Let me note here that I am not anti-training—I think that there are many areas in which aspiring administrators both need and can make practical use of thoughtfully designed training that helps them learn to manage processes and people and to lead effectively in complex circumstances. I especially liked the suggestion offered by one reader of a yearlong seminar-type program which has as its “lab” the actual concurrent job duties of the participants, a model that could work especially well at a larger institution where there is a regular supply of new administrators being promoted from within and arriving from outside. I do, however, take exception to the idea, expressed by a couple of commenters, that the lack of such training is why many institutions of higher education are in serious trouble right now. I am quite certain that this claim cannot be empirically verified... The ultimate point is that yes, training is important. Administrators absolutely must understand the processes and legalities of their positions, how to manage crises and finances, and learning these by trial and error is the surest route to disaster—I would never argue otherwise. At the same time, as the examples above show, training is not the be-all and end-all of institutional success. People are people, by turns noble and venal, clever and stupid, honest and devious, competent and inept. Character matters, brains matter, empathy matters, work ethic matters. Training can sharpen these, but if an administrator doesn’t have them in the first place, no amount of training is going to fix the problem."

Interview with Terri Ludwig, president and chief executive of Enterprise Community Partners; Corner Office, New York Times, 8/20/11

Adam Bryant, Corner Office, New York Times; Interview with Terri Ludwig, president and chief executive of Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit housing finance organization:

"Q. Let’s shift to hiring. How would you interview me?

A. First of all, I would have expected you to be pretty well screened by the time you get to me. So I probably wouldn’t spend much time on the technical aspects. I would spend some time talking first about our mission. Why Enterprise? What’s compelling to you about housing and community development? I’d be looking for really a true commitment to that — something that really resonates and makes sense. And what have you done in your past? What do you do in your free time? I’d definitely want to know about who you are as a person. How do you live your life?

Q. And what other questions do you ask?

A. How do you like to work on a team? I would probably ask some specifics about how you would work toward getting a project done, and how you would engage teams. Give me some examples of how you’ve done that."