Crabgrass doing search = keith ellison ice buying private prisons at inflated prices turned up two local media outlet reports on Ellison highlighting for the nation that something greatly suspect was going on. (Crabghrass cannot reasonably envision any such fiscal oversight from a Republican AG. Minnesota has its Trump appointed U.S. Attorney, where nothing of the private prison price inflation scandal has been mentioned. Not a peep.)
There is -
MN AG Keith Ellison says Congress should investigate Federal Government’s purchase of Appleton Prison
ST. PAUL, Minn. (KFGO) – Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is calling on congress to investigate the Federal Government’s $495 million purchase of an out-of-service prison in Appleton, Minnesota.
Ellison says around a year and a half ago the company that owned the prison, CoreCivic, offered to sell it to the state of Minnesota for $75 million. In August, the Federal Government bought the prison for nearly half a billion dollars with plans to operate it as an ICE detention center.
Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul schnell turned down the offer to buy the prison in May of 2025, he says the federal governments payment of over six-times the price of $75 million is unexplainable.
Ellison says that CoreCivic and it’s CEO have donated ‘significant amounts’ to President Trump in the past.
Ellison says he’s asking the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees and the House Oversight Committee to investigate why the Federal Government paid over half a billion for the prison.
That is local coverage from Fargo, ND. At the same time, there is MN local coverage.
Minnesota AG Keith Ellison calls on Congress to investigate Dept. of Homeland Security after KARE 11's report on prison sale
In August, DHS purchased the Prairie Correctional Facility from CoreCivic, Inc., to use it as a detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). KARE 11 obtained records showing that CoreCivic offered to sell the private prison for $75 million last year, before ICE eventually purchased it for $495.6 million.
The price difference is more than taxpayers are estimated to have lost in Minnesota’s much-publicized Feeding Our Future fraud scandal.
“I’m calling on House and Senate Homeland Security Committees, and the House Oversight Committee, to immediately begin investigating why Trump paid almost half a billion to a Trump donor for a prison worth just $75 million," Ellison said in a press release. "Trump scamming taxpayers out of almost half a billion dollars is outrageous, especially at a time when Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran are already raising prices for Minnesotans.”
For the full investigation, click here.
Two things are demonstrated. Without local media with sufficient resources to investigate or cover local suspicious activity, a reliance on national outlets to report things might fail to get relevant news to the public. The second thing, with a Democratic Party AG, the call for investigation by federal authorities got sounded. If Ellison is not reelected, if a Republican gets into Minnesota's Attorney General office, the watchdog function would be neglected over any Republican misdeeds. If Trump is afoot, Minnesota, indeed every state, should have an AG who is not compromised by Party loyalties to Trump.
A Trump skeptic is needed to assure Trump and hiss underlings do not get away with waste, fraud or abuse. Indeed, even the appearance of impropriety deserves fiscal oversight to avoid waste.
And, yes, this is a site favoring Democratic Party candidates in general. But beyond that, the argument holds. State AG's of the other party than the one currently in power in Washington will be the watchdogs needed, whereas State AGs of the DC leadership party might look the other way, or simply not see as keen a watchdog duty over their own party's shenanigans in DC.
BOTTOM LINE: We need Keith Ellison to be reelected this November as Minnesots's Attorney General, to keep a balance that has proven sound in this recent attention to ICE channeling free money to operations which seem grossly overepaid for assets.
______________UPDATE______________
You can ask your favorite chatbot, or search online = how widespread is ICE overpaying for private prison sites
Crabgrass did that. NPR reported :
And those arrested with no criminal record rose by over 2,000 percent since Trump took office. That’s according to a report last month from the American Immigration Council. That’s a non-partisan non-profit focused on immigrant rights.
But for private companies invested in the administration’s agenda, that human cost has meant a hefty pay check. The private prison companies CoreCivic and The GEO Group have both reported $2 billion, or a 13 percent increase, in revenue in 2025. The two contractors opened nine new detention centers for ICE use.
Private prison titan The GEO Group handed over $1.4 million to President Donald Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc., just days after securing federal detention contracts worth $165 million annually.
Campaign finance filings reveal that GEO Group subsidiary GEO Reentry Services donated $1 million to MAGA Inc. on July 16, 2026, exactly three days after announcing an $85 million annual contract to run a 1,188-bed facility in Hudson, Colorado for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). On July 31, the company funneled another $413,000 to the PAC, two days after landing an $80 million annual deal for another 1,320-bed site it will operate for ICE in Winton, North Carolina.
Despite White House officials claiming contract awards are not affected by political money, the timing exposes the blatant pay-to-play dynamics governing the mass deportation pipeline. GEO Group’s net income soared to $254.3 million amid the administration’s crackdown, up from $31.9 million in 2024. Company founder George Zoley boasted to investors that this expansion represents the largest surge of new business in the company’s history.
The grift extends deeper into government oversight: David Venturella, a former GEO executive, was appointed to run ICE on an acting basis this year. Meanwhile, facilities managed by GEO Group face severe allegations of substandard conditions, including a detainee hunger strike at Delaney Hall in New Jersey.
As GEO lines its pockets off locking humans in cages, its millions buy direct access to an administration eager to monetize the justice system, proving once again that in the private prison industry, human suffering is merely a channel for political kickbacks.
During a second-quarter earnings call in August, an executive with the GEO Group ticked off a list of the private prison company’s accomplishments so far this year. These included securing contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for expanded immigrant detention centers in New Jersey, Michigan, Georgia, and California; working to convert six facilities—most of them former prisons—into ICE detention sites; and making moves to cash in on detention operations at military sites.
“All of these efforts are aimed at placing our company in the best competitive position possible to pursue what we continue to believe are unprecedented growth opportunities,” George Zoley, the executive chair of the GEO Group board, told investors and other stakeholders attending the Aug. 6 call, according to audio and call transcripts from the online investment research website, Seeking Alpha.
Executives at CoreCivic, another major for-profit prison company, were equally upbeat in their earnings call that same month.
“Our business is perfectly aligned with the demands of this moment,” CEO Damon Hininger said on the Aug. 7 call. “We are in an unprecedented environment with rapid increases in federal detention populations nationwide and a continuing need for solutions we provide.”
In some sense, the cheerfulness was not surprising. The day after President Donald Trump was elected to his second term, shares for GEO Group and CoreCivic jumped by double digits.
It is not some "woke" fluffy speculation that something's up. It is firm factual reporting. Investigations and answers are needed. Shoult the expected "blue wave" result from midterm elections, resultant inquiry can be expected., With media outlets already on the story, we can guess what well funded Congressional investigations might uncover. It is shameful that private prison commerce even exists in the nation, and now it seems there is mischief afoot at large fiscal cost to taxpayers.
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
The issue is not a new one. The Lever has posted back in March of this year about private prisons and ICE use of same for detention overflow. The pattern of ICE using Big Beautful Bill windfall money to overpay for private facilities is newer; in that the BBB had to have been passed in order to provide the slush money for the mischief. An image of pigs at a trough could be added, but the mind's image should suffice.