On November 9, 2026, the Trump administration opened Minnesota's first immigrant detention center. Buses rolled into the small town of Appleton that Monday, the Minnesota Reformer reports.
ICE said in a statement that Homeland Security opened the jail to "carry out the American people's mandate for mass deportations."
That was six days after the American people voted Republicans out of control of Congress.
A $75 million prison, bought for $496 million
The building is the old Prairie Correctional Facility, a 1,600-bed former prison. It belonged to CoreCivic, one of the biggest private prison companies in the country.
In May 2025, CoreCivic offered to sell the prison to the State of Minnesota for $75 million, according to emails KARE 11 obtained and the Reformer described. The state said no.
Then, in August 2026, the federal government bought it. Homeland Security paid $495.6 million, MPR News reported. The county's records put the property's assessed value at $75 million, according to the Reformer.
That's more than six times what the company had been willing to take a year earlier. The extra money came from taxpayers.
And they're paying the company to run it
Buying the prison didn't end the payments. Homeland Security is also paying CoreCivic $536 million over five years to run it, according to the Reformer. CoreCivic told investors it expects the site to bring in about $75 million a year in revenue.
So the company gets paid twice: once to sell the building at many times its old asking price, and again every year to run it.
It's a good time to be CoreCivic. In August, the company told investors it had sold four of its detention facilities to Homeland Security for $2.2 billion, and expected to clear about $1.6 billion after taxes. We wrote about that, and about the CoreCivic executives who wrote checks to Rep. Matt Van Epps before he became one of Congress's loudest voices for ICE funding.
Who CoreCivic is
CoreCivic runs some of the most notorious immigrant detention centers in the country, the Reformer notes. That includes the Dilley center in Texas, which holds families with children. Detainees in its centers commonly complain of disease outbreaks, poor medical care, food they can't eat and too little time outside.
Until now, immigrants arrested in Minnesota were held in local jails or sent to detention centers in other states.
Appleton sits about 150 miles west of the Twin Cities, where most of Minnesota's immigration lawyers work. The Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota has warned that "detention far from counsel is a functional obstacle to due process."
Local residents and the Prairie Alliance for Human Dignity, a group fighting the detention center, planned a vigil and rally outside its gates.
The bottom line
On November 9, 2026, the Trump administration opened a 1,600-bed ICE detention center in Appleton, Minnesota. It bought the empty prison from CoreCivic for $495.6 million, more than six times the $75 million CoreCivic had offered to sell it to the state for a year earlier, and is paying CoreCivic another $536 million over five years to run it.
Source
Minnesota Reformer: "First detainees arrive at Appleton immigrant detention center"
