Up North Progressive

The April 5, 2018 Lake County Star reported that GEO Group Inc., would pay for major upgrades to Baldwin’s sewer system in anticipation of receiving a contract with the federal government to house as many as 22,000 immigration detainees. North Lake Correctional Facility, located in Webber Township north of Baldwin, sits empty since last summer when GEO Inc. opted not to extend a two-year contract with the Vermont Department of Corrections. The prison has 1,800 empty beds, and the US Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, needs the space.

GEO Group opened North Lake Correctional Facility in 1999 to house juvenile offenders in the state of Michigan. The state closed the facility in 2006, reopened in 2011 with inmates from California, closed again, then GEO with the help of local officials won contracts with Vermont and Washington’s Departments of Corrections in 2015. Washington announced before the ink was dry they would never send inmates to Michigan. Vermont sent less than half of the inmates negotiated in the contract, which meant for two years North Lake Correctional Facility in Baldwin stayed open at great cost to GEO Group.

But GEO Group vows one way or another they will re-open North Lake and keep it open. They poured money into Trump’s campaign and their lobbyists are now negotiating a contract to detain immigrants – Legal, illegal, permanent green card holders, whatever it takes –  to fill their prisons. If this plan goes through, that means North Lake could be soon filled to capacity.

But that’s good news, right? That means jobs for the community, and more people living in Baldwin will mean a big boost to the economy.

This is what happened in 2015 when Vermont sent 370 out of 700 prisoners and Washington State sent 0 out of 1000 prisoners to Michigan: Senior positions in the prison were filled by out of state GEO employees. The only jobs filled by locals were lower paid positions. Very few of those people found homes in or near Baldwin. Lake County has a serious affordable housing problem, in that there is no affordable housing available. People had to live in Big Rapids, Cadillac, or even Ludington. Some of them spent months living in hotels until they found permanent housing. If GEO Group manages to fill North Lake with detainees, they will need to hire more people than they did in 2015. Where will those people live? Not in Baldwin, there’s no housing for them to occupy, and they wouldn’t want to; the village no longer has a fire department as of January 1, 2018.

But thanks to GEO Group anticipating more ICE detainees needing prison cells, the village will have an upgraded sewer system to process all of the extra sewage the prison creates when they become a federal detainee center in Northern Michigan. Some people may think this is good for Baldwin, but it’s likely the same thing will happen as before: Not many locals will be hired by GEO Group, and those who do move to work at North Lake will live in another community where they can find housing. Baldwin is another victim of a large corporation promising jobs and money but never delivers.