A leading Democratic senator has opened an investigation into the Trump administration’s purchase of a Minnesota immigration detention facility from the private prison operator CoreCivic, after it emerged the government paid far more for the site than the state had been asked to pay.
Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire wrote to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and to CoreCivic on 11 November, asking both to preserve their records on the sale. The letters were made public on Friday. Hassan is seeking to chair the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee when Democrats take control of Congress in January, a role that would give her subpoena power over immigration enforcement spending.
At the centre of the inquiry is the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota, a 1,600-bed prison that had stood idle since 2010. DHS bought it from CoreCivic on 4 August for about $495.6 million, according to a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. CoreCivic continues to run the site under a management contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that runs to August 2031, and the facility began receiving detainees on 9 November.
The price is striking because CoreCivic had offered the same facility to Minnesota’s Department of Corrections for about $75 million in May 2025. Swift County, where the prison sits, assessed the property at roughly $14 million this year. Hassan’s office said the department “reportedly purchased the Prairie Correctional Facility from CoreCivic, a major immigration detention contractor, for $495 million — shortly after Minnesota declined to purchase the same facility for $75 million”.
DHS has said it followed the standard federal appraisal process and that the $75 million figure was a preliminary, non-binding offer that did not account for replacement costs. CoreCivic has said the price reflects the cost of building a comparable facility at today’s construction prices, less depreciation, and was set after an independent appraisal. No investigation has found wrongdoing, and Hassan’s inquiry is examining how the price was set and what valuation work supported it.
The purchase is part of a much larger spending surge on private detention. CoreCivic’s revenue rose 28 per cent year on year in its latest results, helped by increased demand from ICE and the sale of four detention facilities to the federal government for a combined $2.21 billion. Its shares fell about 2.5 per cent in New York trading on Friday morning, though they are still up about 64 per cent this year.
The scrutiny comes as the Government Accountability Office reported in September that ICE had proceeded with six detention expansion initiatives since January 2025 without conducting the necessary analysis and planning. With Democrats set to take control of the Senate committee that oversees the department, the Appleton deal is likely to become an early test of how closely the new majority examines the cost of the administration’s immigration crackdown.
Sources: Reuters — “Democratic US senator probes CoreCivic sale of ICE facility in Minnesota”; US Securities and Exchange Commission, CoreCivic Form 8-K, 4 August 2026 (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1070985/000119312526335068/d174637d8k.htm)
