ICE may be looking to use the Appleton prison
I did a story here about this possibility in January 2025. That is, well before the appalling ICE “surge” effort in this state, and the backlash. From June 5:
A proposed contract and new jobs posted recently for a Minnesota prison are fueling long-running speculation that the federal government wants to reopen it as an immigration detention facility.
The developments at the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota, come on the heels of $1 million in renovations to the facility located three hours west of the Twin Cities. The former private prison has been closed since 2010, but rumors arose last year that the federal government was eyeing it as a detention facility.
The 147-page proposed contract was posted on a public database run by the federal government that tracks government contracts and grants. The document says the prison meets ICE’s requirements, and provides a five-year breakdown of how the facility could operate as an immigration detention center. The prison is owned by CoreCivic, one of ICE’s largest contractors.
(Sahan Journal)
Certainly after all that’s happened here the idea of an ICE concentration camp in Minnesota won’t go over well to say the least. But the Trump administration, in its typical pigheaded way, could very well try to crudely force it through nonetheless.
I did see a suggestion on one of the microblogging sites that I could get behind. Namely, that the facility be used to imprison Trump administration criminals, from the top on down. For that to happen we’ll need a president who is serious about holding flagrant criminals in the preceding presidency accountable. Which was unfortunately not the case with Obama and Biden. Obviously the “we have to look forward, not back” approach hasn’t worked in this context.
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