DHS overpays for private prison, making a mockery of Team Trump’s rhetoric about ‘waste’

The Department of Homeland Security paid more than $495 million last summer for a 1,600-bed private prison in Appleton, Minnesota, a facility its owner, CoreCivic, had earlier tried to sell to the state for $75 million. Minnesota's corrections department turned that offer down, deciding it neither needed nor could afford the site. The New York Times reported the sale price, and Safia Khan, the department's deputy commissioner and chief of staff, called the gap a shock. CoreCivic gave $500,000 to President Donald Trump's inauguration committee after his 2024 win, the Times also reported. Neither the White House nor DHS responded to its requests for comment, according to MS NOW.

The deal fits a pattern of questionable DHS spending, MS NOW notes. Under former Secretary Kristi Noem, the agency bought warehouses for detention and later dropped seven of them, and it awarded a nearly half-billion-dollar no-bid contract for mostly idle used planes to a firm whose chairman had given to a Noem-aligned committee.

Asked about the prison purchase on Friday, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said he knew nothing about it and called the question a waste of time. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Democrat, called the deal outrageous given rising prices.

Summarized by PolitiKool from MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at MS NOW →