A Concentration Camp in Arkansas?

Is Gov. Sarah Sanders trying to railroad through a mysterious, unwanted $750 million prison to please her dictator-leader Donald Trump?

Apr 12, 2025

My Crusty Old Journalist’s mind keeps asking: Does Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders want to force a 3,000-bed concentration camp in secluded Franklin County? A mysterious prison citizens there don’t want and the state Senate has refused to fund five times? Why?

Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders in 2019 (The Guardian photo)

Maybe it’s because she was Donald Trump’s press secretary through his turbulent first term and has sworn allegiance to him. Which would include his current drive for retribution on who he considers his enemies in politics, the press, and the courts.

Maybe it’s because I recall learning how Arkansas operated two stifling internment camps for Japanese Americans — most of them U.S. citizens — during World War II: still a ghostly black mark on The Natural State and the nation.

Maybe it’s because we know Donald Trump loves to form private prisons for the masses he considers illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and also trying to enter our borders -- people he’s already imprisoning without proper due process…with the U.S. Supreme Court’s help.

Maybe it’s because his obsession with possessing Greenland in his first term led me to write a column questioning if he wanted to create a new Siberia to imprison political enemies. A column I republished in this substack recently as he renewed his lust to grab the world’s largest ice-incrusted island. A public stance which has led the European Union to discuss providing military troops to defend Greenland against Trump’s efforts. (See my columns linked below.)

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen how the Trump administration is mirroring the Nazis when they took over Germany in the 1930s, leading me to write the column Doing What Hitler Did.

Maybe it’s all the above.

Whatever the reason, Sanders is showing she’s determined to build the shady prison, going against the opposition of Franklin County’s citizens, their Republican legislators, and other concerned Arkansans with yet another way she’s abusing our tax money.

A Weary State Senate, An Anxious Prison Board

The Arkansas state legislature hopes to end its current session this coming week. The Senate has refused five different times to fund the $750 million (in our tax money) Sanders wants for her prison. Yet she has her lackies in the Senate still searching for ways to get the money. There’s disagreement on whether she’ll call a special session to drive the funding through if the Senate doesn’t approve it before adjourning. Some senators are mumbling of finding other ways of funding it.

But while the state Senate has refused to fund the $750 million, the state prison board – evidently anxious to please Sanders – has called for construction proposal bids for the prison.

Nobody’s talking about whether it might end up being a secluded, privately operated prison, the kind Trump loves. Or whether Trump’s federal government might take it over. But everybody knows Trump is challenging the limits of presidential executive authority with constant new twisting actions, using and abusing our tax money to fund his authoritarian activities. And he’s made it clear he wants retribution on those who have legally opposed him.

The Never-Ending Story

Meanwhile, it appears Sanders will keep punching away at Senate Bill 354 and her prison funding bill’s sponsor, Searcy Republican Sen. Jonathan Dismang.

On Friday, the Arkansas Advocate newspaper, a stalwart follower of state legislative action, summarized the condition of the controversial prison’s never-ending story:

Dismang said he expects “quite a bit of movement” over the summer on the estimated $825 million project because the Legislature set aside $75 million in 2022 that has already been appropriated to the Arkansas Department of Corrections.

Following the state’s purchase of 815 acres near Charleston last year for nearly $3 million, the corrections board has moved forward with the project by hiring a construction management company and seeking proposals from architectural firms and contractors.

The Legislature also set aside another $330 million for the project that hasn’t been appropriated yet. State lawmakers have the ability to release some additional funding if needed, but Dismang said he doesn’t expect the Legislature will have to take more action until they return for the fiscal session next spring.

But politics is a sneaky business. So stay alert this coming week before the legislature adjourns. A Sanders end run may be in the offing. If not, a special session? Whether or not that happens, Dismang made it clear the issue won’t die, but will rise again next spring.

All this reminded me that back in 2012, I had read about Heart Mountain, the WWII Japanese American internment camp in Wyoming. It led me to write this sonnet, with which I’ll close this column, thinking about a possible recurrence in Arkansas:

HEART MOUNTAIN, 1943

Done for the day with plowing through sagebrush,

he rubs his blistered poet’s hands and looks

out past barbed wire and guard tower, all hushed

but for prairie wind. Feels he’d write a book,

if they’d let him—ode to that far klippe,

comparing it to cliffs near where they lived

in LA before troops loaded them up

like lettuce, shipped them here by train. He’ll give

the officers freedom’s inked snarl next week

when forced to fill out the loyalty form,

their plan to draft young male citizens, seek