Up North Progressive
Politics and commentary for Northern MichiganMay you have an affordable and abundant Thanksgiving. 
131 Years Old and Still Relevant: Labor Day 2025
Monday , 1, September 2025 Community Leave a comment
Two Anti-ICE and GEO Group Protests in Baldwin
Wednesday , 18, June 2025 GEO Group, Punk Prison Leave a comment
GEO Group once again activated the prison located in Baldwin, Michigan, for the fifth time. Unlike the previous four failed activations, this one occurred quietly. The prison is up and running now and receiving detainees kidnapped by ICE. 
GEO Group has a less-than-positive relationship with the community. Originally a facility for juvenile offenders, the “punk prison” grew from a 300-bed facility to 1800 beds and operated as a maximum security prison. GEO Group has never kept its promise of being an employer of locals, instead filling the highest-paying jobs internally from other facilities around the country. Each activation lasted only a few years before the prison shuttered when the contracts ended. North Lake spends more time being closed than open. GEO Group supports Baldwin and Webber Township by advocating for a reduction in the property taxes of the vacant building, thereby depriving the community of necessary funding for services.
In response to the current use of North Lake Correctional Facility, also known as “the punk prison,” organizers have two protests planned for the near future. The first event will take place on Saturday, June 21, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM at Webber Township Community Park, located on M-37. Manistee County Democratic Party organized this protest.
We strongly oppose GEO’s plan to reopen North Lake as the largest immigrant detention center in the Midwest. This facility will bring increased ICE presence and fear to communities across northern Michigan. GEO’s business model profits from human suffering. Their history—marked by abuse, medical neglect, and multiple hunger strikes by detainees—makes it clear: they don’t serve justice, and they don’t serve our communities.
This facility is backed by a no-bid, billion-dollar federal contract and supported by Rep. John Moolenaar, who has accepted donations from GEO and refuses to meet with concerned constituents. Instead of listening to the people he represents, he’s enabling a system that detains vulnerable immigrants, often without due process, and tears families apart.
You can learn more about the protest here.
The second protest targets Michigan Works, the state’s job recruitment agency, which facilitates all hiring for the GEO Group at North Lake Correctional Facility. This protest will take place on Monday, June 23, 2025, at the Michigan Works Service Center, located on M-37 in Baldwin, at 11:00 AM. No Detention Centers in Michigan organized this protest in response to Michigan Works cooperating with ICE, detaining and kidnapping people in the state.
Michigan’s ICE concentration camp is now open in Baldwin, with support and collaboration from Michigan Works. If you don’t think a state-funded organization should be sponsoring hiring efforts for this atrocity and allowing the GEO Group to continue profiting from the detention and deportation machine, join us at the Michigan Works hiring party in Baldwin on Monday, June 23rd at 11am.ICE out of Baldwin. Lake County deserves better. The GEO Group doesn’t work for Michigan. ICE out of Baldwin. Lake County deserves better. The GEO Group doesn’t work for Michigan.
The public is invited to attend both protests. These gatherings are meant to bring people together who are concerned with the largest ICE detention center in the Midwest operating in Lake County, Michigan. GEO Group has a horrible track record with how they treat prisoners, the prison staff, and their failure to keep their promise of hiring residents of the region.
Northern Michigan doesn’t need ICE operating here, and Lake County doesn’t need North Lake Correctional Facility working with ICE.
Here We Go Again: GEO Group’s Wack-a-Mole Prison Scheduled to Open for the 5th Time
Thursday , 20, March 2025 GEO Group, Punk Prison Leave a comment
For-profit “punk prison” North Lake Correctional Facility, owned by GEO Group, announced today that they have a shiny new federal prison contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka ICE.
The prison corporation that had maxed out its contributions to the Trump campaign by February 2024 received its payoff. The 1,800-bed facility, located just north of Baldwin in Lake County, will begin the next chapter in a long series of unsuccessful activations that have yet to last more than a few years.
The deal with ICE is expected to be final in a matter of months. The promise is a multi-year contract generating a projected annual revenue of over $70 million in the first year alone. The list of services the prison will provide includes use of the facility, security, maintenance, food service (which is often described as tasteless and undercooked rice and beans), recreation facilities, medical care, and legal services.
Executive Chairman of GEO Group, George Zoley, had this to say about taking North Lake out of mothballs for the fifth time:
We expect that our company-owned North Lake Facility in Michigan will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace. We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.
If you didn’t know, “public-private partnership” is corporate speak for “the government is going to give us your tax dollars to run this prison so we can profit from it, but not share any of it with you, the taxpayers.”
GEO Group may be optimistic, but the residents of Lake County have a love-hate relationship with North Lake Correctional Facility. With nearly 2,000 beds to fill, the promise of hiring local people has yet to happen. The salaried jobs will be filled internally by current GEO Group employees. The jobs left over will be the lowest-paid, and GEO Group will struggle to hire enough people. Very few residents of Lake County or the surrounding counties will work at the prison.
There won’t be much local fanfare with the fifth activation of the punk prison, especially when GEO Group enjoys annual revenues of $2.5 billion while begging the Michigan Tax Tribunal to lower the assessed value of its property. Let’s not start with where all the GEO Group transplants will live. This activation will be no different than the last four—a complete failure.
Tom Kunse Voted To Defund Michigan Schools Today: Here’s An Art Contest For The Kids
Thursday , 6, March 2025 Gotion, MIGOP, Section 16, Tom Kunse Leave a comment
March 6, 2025, will go down as a busy day for Republican State House Rep Tom, a two-year or five-year fight Kunse. In typical Republican fashion, ole Tommy Boy sent mixed messages about supporting Michigan public schools and students.
The day began with an article in the local paper that Kunse was holding an art contest for 100th State House District school students. Then, on the same day, King of Konsistency Kunse joined the other 58 House Republicans in Lansing and voted to defund Michigan public schools.
Every single Republican just voted to defund Michigan schools and kids. #miched pic.twitter.com/OymnCpwXB0
— MI House Democrats (@MIHouseDems) March 6, 2025
Is it possible Tom Kunse isn’t aware that public schools are where students in the 100th State House District will have access to things like art supplies? Some school districts in northern Michigan can’t even afford to have art programs. It’s great that Tom wants to take even more funds away from students.
The theme for Kunse’s art contest is “rural beauty.” Students in the 100th State House District should have no problem finding subjects for their works of art. They can draw and paint pictures of the vacant land in Mecosta County that’s been for sale for 20 years until a company bought it to create 2,300 jobs so their families could have a livable income. There is also that acreage in Clare County Kunse’s family sold for 25 million dollars for a phantom health clinic. Kunse pocketed $3.5 million from that sale for himself—another good place to paint and draw rural beauty in the 100th District. And let’s not forget that piece of Isabella County property that Kunse and a business partner tried to steal in 2006 by piling all of their stuff on it to make it look like it belonged to them.
Hopefully, our young artists in the 100th District will find a pencil stub and clean scrap paper to sketch the rural beauty around us. Made possible by the machinations of our state rep, Tom Kunse. You can tell Tom Kunse what you think of him voting to defund schools and launching a student art contest on the same day. Kunse is holding a virtual town hall on Friday, March 7, 2025, from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM. You may want to call his office at 517-373-7314 or email him at TomKunse@house.mi.gov since the link goes nowhere—an excellent metaphor for Kunse’s regard for school children in the 100th State House District.
It’s going to be one of those years.
Maxed-Out GOP Donor GEO Group Demands Tax Break from Poorest County in Michigan
Sunday , 6, October 2024 GEO Group, Punk Prison 1 Comment
Last month, GEO Group contested a property tax assessment with the Michigan Tax Tribunal, demanding that the value of their sole Michigan prison be significantly reduced. The assessed property is the shuttered North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin, Michigan.
The facility was built 26 years ago with the approval of the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. GEO Group, then called Wackenhut, promised to be good neighbors to the community, providing jobs and additional revenue to local community institutions. The 571-bed facility opened to receive juvenile offenders, but without support from the state, it eventually closed.
The prison attempted to re-open three more times, accepting contracts with prisoners shipped in from California and Vermont and with generous donations to Donald Trump in 2017, federal detainees who were arrested for criminal activity. Every activation was temporary, and the prison closed again and again. Fortunately, this had little impact on unemployment, as GEO Group, after expanding the prison to 1800 beds in 2011, transferred GEO Group employees from other facilities for jobs that paid living wages.
Is the private for-profit prison suffering a financial hardship requiring a significant tax break? Let’s take a look:
GEO Group’s 2023 annual revenue was $2.42 billion, with a net value of $1.68 billion, a net increase of 81.29 percent as of September 20, 2024. The company pays no dividends to stockholders and no longer holds REIT status as of 2021. Despite this, GEO Group’s 100 private facilities with 81,000 beds employ 18,000 people and still make a profit.
In February, GEO Group maxed out political campaign contributions totaling $1.8 million for 2024. The billion-dollar corporation nearly exclusively donated money to Republicans, and most of its contributions went to Donald Trump’s political PACs.
In 2023, GEO Group spent $1.25 million in lobbying funds to support congressional bills for the Department of Homeland Security and securing the border. As of June 2024, GEO Group lobbyists contributed $690,000 for similar legislation.
Compare this to demanding a massive tax break from one of the poorest counties in Michigan, where a shuttered 1800-bed facility stands empty after four failed activations. GEO Group promised North Lake Correctional Facility would employ hundreds of local job seekers. The prison promised to be a good neighbor. How can this multi-billion dollar private corrections corporation be a good neighbor while eliminating the funds that keep the county financially afloat? It’s not the county’s fault that GEO Group’s business plan for a giant maximum security prison in Northern Michigan failed to make a profit. GEO Group must remember their good neighbor promise and pay their fair share. They can afford it.
Meet the Candidates: Floyd Brown for Lake County Probate Judge
Friday , 20, September 2024 Candidates, Election 2024 Leave a comment
Lake County’s primary election on August 6, 2024, eliminated a long list of candidates for Lake County Probate Judge. Of the two remaining candidates, one of them is a Lake County resident with real community roots and an impressive career history. That candidate is Floyd Brown.
Floyd Brown graduated from Baldwin High School in 1984. He attended community college in Kalamazoo for one year before enlisting with the United States Air Force. He served his country for 23 years, earning numerous service medals and commendations. He deployed to bases state-side and overseas. He is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm.
While in military service, Brown continued his education. He earned associate’s degrees in liberal arts and paralegal studies, a bachelor’s degree in business management, and a Juris Doctorate from Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego, California.
Floyd Brown is licensed to practice law in Michigan and California, representing clients in Lake, Kent, Mecosta, and Isabella Counties. Brown’s legal career includes both private practice and public service. He worked for Klinedinst, Fliehman, and McKillop in San Diego, California. His work included real estate, employment and labor, and discrimination litigation. His public work consists of working for the Social Security Administration as an Attorney Advisor and his appointment to the Michigan Military Appeals Tribunal by Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2023.
Floyd Brown is endorsed by the Honorable Mark S. Wickens (Retired). For more information about Floyd Brown, please visit his website.
On November 5, 2024, Lake County can elect a Lake County resident for Probate Judge. Vote for Floyd Brown for Lake County Probate Judge.
