Community Mobilizes Against GEO Group Plan to Reopen Rivers Correctional as 1,400-Bed ICE Detention Center in Hertford County, NC

Activists rallied at the NC General Assembly on July 22, opposing ICE’s documented plan to reopen the shuttered Rivers Correctional Institution in Winton, Hertford County as a GEO Group-operated 1,400-bed detention center by the end of 2026 (2026-07-24–ice-plans-1400-bed-rivers-correctional-hertford-nc). A separate local protest was organized in the county itself. One Hertford County commissioner expressed reservations, citing recent fatal ICE shootings in other states. ICE publicly stated it has “no new detention centers to announce at this time” — a denial issued even as internal planning documents obtained by the New York Times describe an active fast-track plan.

This is the community-mobilization response that followed within two days of the plan’s disclosure, and it registers the same jobs-versus-detention local division the timeline has documented at other GEO Group and CoreCivic reopening sites through 2026 — the facility was previously operated by GEO Group as a federal Bureau of Prisons contract prison before its 2022 closure.