Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen meets with troops at the southern border in Texas. (Courtesy of the Governor's Office)
LINCOLN — The media spectacle of Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen unveiling plans for a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in the southwestern part of the state follows a political playbook from the Trump administration.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security touted the new facility, saying it would help ICE agents “remove the worst of the worst” — despite the governor and state agency heads explaining it would house only low-level and medium-risk immigration-related detainees.
Speaking inside McCook’s Ben Nelson Regional Airport as protesters gathered outside, Pillen said he was “proud to be a part of Trump’s Team” in an effort to “make sure we keep our community safe. He pointed to a previous arrest of an MS-13 “kingpin” in Omaha as a justification for the ICE partnership.
“This stuff hits close to home and hits every corner of this state and country,” Pillen repeated in a Wednesday evening post on X. “Government’s most important job is to keep us safe.”
Dona-Gene Barton, a political science professor who studies political behavior at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said it was no surprise Nebraska would want to join Trump’s expansion of ICE detention efforts as the agency tries to meet its goal of increasing deportations.
“This is a Republican governor showing support for a Republican president’s agenda,” Barton said.
Trump, throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, promised voters what he called “the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History,” after the Biden administration saw illegal border crossings spike at the end of 2023 but start decreasing last year.
ICE is poised to become the highest-funded federal law enforcement agency because of the recently passed “One Big Beautiful Bill” that pays for much of Trump’s domestic agenda. Roughly $45 billion in the law was set aside to build, rent and staff new centers to detain immigrants, like the one Nebraska plans to operate for ICE at the state prison system’s McCook Work Ethic Camp.
Other funding would be allocated toward hiring 10,000 ICE officers within five years, providing retention bonuses, covering the transportation of immigrants, upgrading ICE facilities, detaining families and hiring ICE immigration lawyers for enforcement and removal proceedings in immigration court.
Using Nebraska’s McCook facility, a medium-security prison, is part of a detention expansion strategy aimed at reviving dormant prisons, repurposing military bases and securing partnerships with private prison contractors, local sheriffs and GOP governors to house a record number of detainees, The Washington Post reported.
The nationwide ICE expansions come as recent polling suggests a majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, though most Republicans still support it. Recent polling indicates a shift in people’s attitudes from last year, when more Americans supported less immigration and stricter immigration enforcement.
The state also experienced an ICE raid on Glenn Valley Foods in Omaha earlier this year, which sparked protests in the state’s largest city and in Lincoln.
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Several local Democrats, advocacy groups, and everyday Nebraskans have raised concerns about the federally dubbed “Cornhusker Clink,” calling it a “harmful, dangerous and rapid expansion.”
The Nebraska Democratic Party said the facility is “yet another ‘bend the knee’ moment by top Republicans in Nebraska.” It said Republicans promised to “go after criminals” but “instead locked up hardworking” people who contribute to the state’s agricultural economy.
State Sen. George Dungan of Lincoln, a Democrat in the officially nonpartisan Legislature, told the Examiner he had questions about whether the facility would require the state to provide funding and whether an ICE detention center is needed in the state.
“For [Pillen] to be showing off to the federal administration in this way just seems out of touch with everyday Nebraskans,” Dungan said. “All of it is because we have an administration that’s failed to actually deal with any kind of real immigration reform.”
Most Republican state senators reached by the Examiner have said they are on board with the new effort in Nebraska. State Sen. Loren Lippincott of Central City, a conservative who has carried bills Trump sought, including efforts to change how Nebraska counts its Electoral College votes for president, said he fully supports the McCook facility “as Nebraskans in service to a safer America.”
State Sen. Merv Riepe of Ralston, often a conservative swing vote in the Legislature, told the Examiner, “If Nebraska has the capacity to help out, I don’t think that we should resist … as long as it’s a good and fair and legal process.”
The Nebraska Republican Party said the announcement “demonstrates the seriousness of the crisis and the need for leadership that prioritizes Nebraska families.”
Pillen’s office said any “backlash to this initiative is politically motivated.”
“It’s simple. Those who are opposed to Nebraska doing its fair share in securing our nation’s border want to relive the failed Biden-era open-border policies,” said Laura Strimple, a Pillen spokeswoman. “Nebraskans spoke loud and clear last November and demanded order at the border.”
Barton, the UNL professor, said the tough talk on immigration from Pillen is a similar political playbook to ones used by Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when it came to “Alligator Alcatraz,” the Florida-run immigration detention facility in the Everglades.
“The issue is this rhetoric doesn’t match reality,” Barton said. “This rhetoric doesn’t even match what Governor Pillen has said about the facility being used to house low to medium security risks.”
Nebraska officials said the facility will be the Midwestern hub for ICE detentions. Pillen, during his Tuesday press conference at McCook, said the center could hold migrants from nearby states. Neighboring Colorado, led by Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, has recently pushed back against helping ICE with immigration enforcement.
The Work Ethic Camp in McCook would be converted to house up to 300 migrants. The state prison was designed to house up to 200 people. Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz” was designed to house 3,000 and could accommodate up to 5,000. Indiana’s new ICE facility, which the feds nicknamed the “Speedway Slammer,” is expected to hold up to 1,000.
As for the Nebraska facility’s name, it appears to be part of a broader PR strategy by the White House to use visuals that aim to persuade migrants without legal status to leave the country, while also signaling that the administration will not tolerate resistance.
Homeland Security, for instance, posted an AI-generated photo of a cornfield with ICE hats with a caption of “Coming Soon: The Cornhusker Clink” next to a corn emoji.
The names of the immigration detention facilities and online memes surrounding them are aimed at gaining media attention and riling up a part of the GOP base that supports Trump’s approach to immigration enforcement, Barton said.
Barton said the Nebraska facility’s small capacity shows it is “largely symbolic,” meant to demonstrate support for Trump’s approach.
“It’s not only a way to show support for Donald Trump’s agenda, but show the electorate that these detention centers are going to be throughout the United States,” she said.
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