Western Minnesota prison begins taking ICE detainees

The long-empty prison in the western Minnesota town of Appleton began accepting detainees just months after the federal government purchased the prison to hold immigrants facing deportation.

“DHS opened the Appleton Detention Facility on Nov. 9 to strengthen America’s ability to enforce its immigration laws and carry out the American people’s mandate for mass deportations,” a spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a prepared statement.

On Monday evening, one of the six white prison buses that had been making test runs to the facility dropped off several detainees, according to several local residents. The federal government’s online detainee locator also lists at least one immigrant in custody at what’s now called the Appleton Detention Facility.

ICE purchased the prison in August for $496 million from CoreCivic, more than six times the $75 million the private prison company offered to sell the facility to the Minnesota Department of Corrections a year ago.

An ICE spokesperson said a previous “nonbinding” offer to the state did not include a formal appraisal or take into account the cost of building a new facility. The spokesperson noted that estimates to replace the similarly sized Stillwater prison were around $1.3 billion.

“The site gives ICE immediate capacity to detain and remove those who have no legal right to remain, protecting American communities and restoring the integrity of our borders without waiting years for new construction,” the statement said.

ICE hired CoreCivic to operate the Appleton detention center and the company expects to earn $75 million over five years from the deal. The prison will need 500 employees when the 1,600-bed prison is operating at full capacity next year. So far, CoreCivic officials say they have hired about 125 people.

To fill the gap, CoreCivic brought in a startup team and workers have filled the city’s lone hotel in the small prairie town of 1,400, along with the few other places to stay in surrounding communities.

“CoreCivic has experienced teams that assist with reopening and startup activities, but our focus is on building a long-term workforce drawn from Appleton and the surrounding region wherever possible,” the company said in a statement.

The city built the Appleton prison in the 1990s as an economic development tool. It was never as successful as local leaders hoped and the city eventually sold it to the Corrections Corporation of America, which is now CoreCivic.

The newly renovated detention center has drawn considerable attention in Appleton, which has struggled economically since the prison closed in 2010. Many in the town are excited about the promise of new jobs, but opponents worry how immigrants will be treated.

“Making our town’s livelihood depend on locking people up puts families and our community at risk. Human suffering should never be a source of corporate profit,” said Nicole Meyer of Prairie Alliance for Human Dignity, a group protesting the facility’s use for immigrant detention. “Sadly, we knew this was coming but it still hits hard.”

Opponents plan a vigil and news conference near the newly opened detention center on Saturday which is the latest attempt to criticize CoreCivic and other private prison contractors for the conditions of their immigrant detention facilities. CoreCivic officials say they adhere to all federal detention standards.

“All our immigration facilities operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability, including being monitored by ICE officials daily,” CoreCivic’s statement said.

Appleton is roughly a three-hour drive from the Twin Cities, and immigration attorneys are concerned the detention center remoteness will make it hard to provide legal help.

A review of American Immigration Lawyers Association membership data by the Binger Center for New Americans at the University of Minnesota Law School found just three immigration attorneys within 100 miles of Appleton. The review also noted there is an office in Willmar for the non-profit Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid, which is one of the state’s largest providers of free attorneys for immigrants.

“We are going to make sure people in Appleton are served,” said Luke Grundman, Legal Aid’s litigation director, who added that three full-time attorneys work in the Willmar office. “The logistics are up in the air until we know what our access will look like.”

Minnesota has about 60 immigration attorneys statewide, and they have been overwhelmed since President Donald Trump returned to office with a push for mass deportations.

Having an attorney can make or break an immigrant’s chances of winning their case, especially when they are in detention. Detained immigrants with legal representation were more likely to avoid deportation and be released on bond, a recent analysis by the Midwest Immigrant Defenders Alliance found.

“You have a large number of people who feel access to a lawyer is the difference between being deported and being able to stay with their families,” said Linus Chan, one of the report’s authors who is also an attorney, law professor and director of the U’s Detainee Rights Clinic. “The more difficult these facilities are to reach, the bigger the challenge.”

In a statement, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said all detainees are given “a court-approved list of free or low-cost attorneys” and have “access to phones they can use to contact their lawyers.”

CoreCivic said private legal visitations, in-person and virtual, are available to detainees seven days a week.

Most immigration cases are treated as civil matters in special courts overseen by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, an arm of the Justice Department. Immigrants are not guaranteed a government-funded attorney so they have to find and pay for their own lawyers.

The Trump administration’s push to detain everyone who entered the country illegally, no matter how long they have been living in the U.S., means a growing number are forced to fight their cases from detention.

“We’ve constantly been working underwater,” Chan said. “We were at the bottom of a pool. I feel like we are about to be at the bottom of an ocean.”

Before CoreCivic sold the prison to ICE in August it was one of the largest property taxpayers in Appleton. The prison was valued at roughly $14 million, according to Swift County records. The city, county and school districts received about $800,000 in annual property taxes.

Selling the prison to the U.S. government means it is no longer taxable, potentially leaving a big hole in local government budgets. In Sept., CoreCivic signed agreements to pay $1.2 million to Appleton and $540,000 to Swift County annually to make up for lost taxes.

But the company can end the agreements anytime as long as they give local officials six months notice.