MARENISCO, Mich. -- About 100 people attended the Marenisco Township Board of Trustees meeting on Feb.16, 2026, for a discussion of Michigan House Resolution 151, introduced by Michigan House District 110 Rep. Gregory Markkanen on Aug. 19, 2025.
During the meeting all who gave public comments -- nearly 25 speakers -- were opposed to the resolution, which urges the federal government to acquire the closed Ojibway Correctional Facility in Marenisco, Michigan, and convert it into a detention and deportation center for the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The facility is owned by the State of Michigan. It was shut down in December 2018, resulting in significant job losses for local workers. Since then, efforts to sell the property have been ongoing.*
However, public comments at the Feb. 16 meeting reflected strong opposition to the proposal for an ICE detention and deportation center. One speaker, Katie LaCosse -- a member of the leadership team for Keweenaw Indivisible, an RN by trade with a Master’s in Healthcare Administration, and Policy and Resolutions Chair for the Houghton County Democratic Party -- spoke about her white paper proposing the shuttered Ojibway Correctional Facility be converted into a state psychiatric hospital. LaCosse said she attended the meeting to provide context behind the idea of a state hospital and not for political reasons.**
"I’m here because the Treatment Advocacy Center says we need 30 beds per 100,000 people to be safe, and Michigan is currently at 19," LaCosse stated at the meeting. "That means we aren't just behind, we are in a state of systemic failure that directly affects our neighbors and families.
"So, this idea is about the 150 people, including children, who struggle with a mental disorder and are sleeping in Michigan emergency rooms per day because there is nowhere appropriate for them to go.
"This is about our local law enforcement and jails returning back to what they are trained to do, which is not to treat and rehabilitate people experiencing a mental health crisis.
"This is about creating hundreds of high-quality clinical, administrative and support staff jobs, and investing in our youth by partnering with Gogebic Community College, Michigan Tech, NMU, and University of WI - Superior to create a career pipeline.
"This is about putting political agendas aside and taking care of each other. It’s a human-to-human commitment to take a dormant campus and turn it into a place of hope. We have the space, we have the need, and we have the heart. Let’s align our resources with our values."
Michigan operates at just 19 psychiatric beds per 100,000 residents, far below the Treatment Advocacy Center’s recommended minimum of 30 beds and optimal recommendation of 60 beds. That means Michigan has a deficit of 1,065 beds. The Ojibway Correctional Facility currently has 1,180 beds spread throughout a campus of buildings that could accommodate and help to rehabilitate varying mental and substance use disorders.
According to LaCosse, the project of turning a correctional center into a psychiatric hospital would not only address the chronic shortfall in inpatient psychiatric care availability but would also serve as a catalyst for economic revitalization of Gogebic County since the facility’s 2018 closure. By establishing a state psychiatric hospital, Michigan can create a new economic anchor and generate hundreds of high quality jobs for healthcare professionals, administrative leaders, and essential support staff.
In her comments at the Feb. 16 Marenisco Township Board meeting, LaCosse offered the Mayo Clinic as an example for inspiration.
"The world-renowned Mayo Clinic was once dismissed as nothing more than a 'clinic in a cornfield,'" LaCosse said. "Innovation doesn't require a skyline, it requires a soul. In the U.P. our kindness is our nature, but our fierce advocacy for our neighbors is our strength. I am asking the folks in this room to look past what might be hard to achieve, and instead, support a solution that addresses Michigan’s most desperate need for generations to come."
Four other Keweenaw Indivisible members traveled to Marenisco and offered comments at the meeting.
Heather Mroz, who is also on the leadership team of Keweenaw Indivisible, has worked for 25 years as a K-12 special educator, primarily with students who have serious emotional impairments and behavioral disorders. She spoke in support of the potential for a psychiatric hospital as proposed by LaCosse.
"The first eight years of my career were in a large metropolitan area. The last seventeen years have been back home in the UP, where I work in Houghton County," Mroz said at the meeting. "I am speaking tonight as a private citizen, not on behalf of my employer. I am here to ask that you consider supporting the proposal to explore converting the former Ojibway Correctional Facility into a state psychiatric hospital.
"Throughout my career, I have worked with children whose mental health struggles became so severe that they were taken to the emergency room because they were a danger to themselves or others. When doctors determine that a child needs admission to a psychiatric hospital, the next step should be placement. But in my experience working in the UP, this very rarely happens. Families are very often told that no bed is available within many hundreds of miles -- or that no bed is available at all. In my personal experience, I’ve known children to remain in an emergency room for days, and sometimes multiple weeks, waiting for a bed to open.
"There are currently no psychiatric hospital beds for children anywhere in the UP. When a bed does become available, it is downstate or out of state -- often eight hours or more from home. For some families, that distance makes treatment impossible. As a result, children are discharged from the emergency room and returned to public school the next day, without receiving the psychiatric treatment that doctors recommended.
"Federal law guarantees all children a free and appropriate public education, and our schools work very hard to meet that obligation. But schools are not hospitals. We are not equipped to provide the level of care that children in severe psychiatric crisis require. When students return to classrooms still in crisis, I have seen it result in serious injuries to teachers, classroom aides, and other children. Over time, repeated violent incidents take a toll. Student behavior is consistently cited as a major reason educators leave the profession, and I have personally watched multiple teachers and aides leave after students were unable to access necessary psychiatric care. Michigan already faces a serious special education teacher shortage, and the lack of psychiatric beds for children in the UP is making it worse.
"I drove here tonight from Houghton because families and schools across the UP face these same barriers when a child is in crisis. Converting the former Ojibway Correctional Facility into a state psychiatric hospital would directly address this shortage. It would create beds for children who need them, reduce long stays in emergency rooms, keep families closer to home, and help protect our school staff and schoolchildren," Mroz concluded.
Keweenaw Indivisible member Aili Palmer of Hancock also commented positively on the meeting in Marenisco.
"I am so grateful I went to the meeting," Palmer told Keweenaw Now. "We heard about it two hours before we would have to leave and then it was a two hour drive. It is hard to make that decision while at work and when you have a 4 year old at home. But it seemed really important to go. I don't have much power, but the power to speak up is always an option."
This map shows the location (within red dotted lines) of Marenisco Township in Gogebic County at the western end of the Upper Peninsula. For a larger map click here or above on "View larger map." (Maps courtesy Google Maps.)Palmer noted the room filled up quickly, and eventually the meeting had to be moved to a room with more space.
"The board members started around 6 and they were very welcoming and said they hadn't had a group this large for public comments in a very long time," Palmer said. "The first person to speak was a local judge, a very public facing figure. He started a little bit unorganized but he quickly set the tone with letting his opinion [be] known that this small, close-knit, hardworking, honorable community does not want ICE and unregulated and unreliable federal agents coming in with no oversight or accountability."
Palmer said she was struck by the fact that every person who spoke at the meeting was anti-ICE and anti-Administration. She said some who had not planned to speak did so because they felt compelled to share their views -- on topics including honor, dignity, family, community, immigrants, parallels in history, being a midwesterner and Yooper, jobs, military experience and more. They also spoke about the fact that Alex Pretti (murdered by ICE /Border Patrol agents in Minneapolis) and his family were from the local area and opening an Ice Concentration Camp would be a dishonor to his family and to him.
"After Katie spoke about encouraging the building to be used as a mental health facility almost the whole room was moved," Palmer added. "In the end the message was so clear. The community does not want Ice, they do not trust Ice, they love their immigrant and indigenous neighbors. We were all at one time immigrants only trying to do the best for our children, and introducing violence and unregulated authoritarianism is not the answer."
Palmer said the meeting inspired her to become more involved and speak up at every opportunity.
"Sometimes you have to take a risk and others will feel empowered to speak up as well," Palmer noted. "It really does take a community and it can also take some practice. The more we speak up with each other the easier it gets."
Houghton resident Cathy Campbell-Olszewski, also a Keweenaw Indivisible member, said she went to Marenisco to support the folks who were opposing the detention center and to support the proposal for a psychiatric residential program.
"It was such a great turnout and so many positive statements by those in the community," Campbell-Olszewski said. "I did not personally speak but the comments people made were so heartfelt about the importance of community, heritage, history, Yoopers, taking care of each other. We all felt a kinship and a new sense of hope!!"
Green also told Keweenaw Now, "It was heartening to see Yoopers of many stripes united in opposition to the abuses of a federal agency that has turned from law enforcement to terrorizing citizens. And exciting to see them enthusiastically enforcing Katie LaCosse’s proposal for a Western UP psychiatric hospital. Yoopers value caring for their neighbors, not assaulting them."
In her CRAG newsletter, Green encourages citizens to support the idea of a psychiatric hospital instead of a detention center by taking the following steps:
Tell your current and wanna-be representatives that better mental health services are a critical need in Michigan and the UP.
Contact your state reps:
Representative Greg Markkenen (Mi-110) 517-373-0850, gregmarkkanen@house.mi.gov, http://repmarkkanen.com/
Senator Edward W. McBroom (district 38), 517-373-7840, SenEMcBroom@senate.michigan.gov, https://www.senatoredmcbroom.com/contact/
Or find your senator here and rep here.
Ask candidates vying for office if they will support this proposal.
Editor's Notes:
* To read Michigan House Resolution 151, click here.
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