For some in this western Minnesota city, an ICE detention center would bring economic promise — and moral compromise

APPLETON, Minn. — After her hometown’s largest employer closed in 2010, Vanessa Lhotka-Meyer stuck around. 

She was out of a job, as were many other residents of this western Minnesota city who had worked at the private prison. Locals thought it would reopen soon enough, she said.

“We understood this was going to be a hit to the community,” the former prison commissary worker said. “I also think there was some unspoken idea that the prison wouldn’t be closed (for) long. None of us could imagine the prison would sit empty for 15 years.”

Prairie Correctional Facility’s 1,600 beds remain empty. 

Unlike Lhotka-Meyer, many former prison workers left town after the closure. The fallout from this departure is still being felt, noticeable in dilapidated houses and shuttered businesses scattered through town.

Occasional rumors about the prison’s reopening swirl around Appleton, raising the prospect of new jobs. The latest user linked to the facility is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE),  with the federal agency listing Appleton among the possible locations for a mass detention center. 

In a city with an economic interest in the prison’s viability, ICE’s eyeing of Appleton to scale up President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration is stirring up conflict about what it would mean both locally and regionally. 

Weighing hands

Ask Appleton residents about the prison’s future and you’ll hear from some who want it open, ICE or not. Voters in the city chose Trump for president by a 28% margin in 2024. 

Others will balance invisible weights in their hands as they consider the question. Despite concern about ICE using the facility, in particular, they may see the economic benefits as enough of a positive to stand it. 

Lhotka-Meyer, who serves on the City Council, suspects that about 80%-90% of the people in Appleton fall into the category of wanting ICE to use the prison. She’s more torn, having been around to see the prison’s economic benefits while having moral reservations about ICE.

During her days at the prison, she said staff and community members knew what the prisoners did to end up in Appleton. Inmates went through the justice system, got charged, got sentenced.

“We knew what their case was if they robbed a bank or did attempted murder,” she said. “These were criminals. With ICE prisoners, it doesn’t feel as cut and dry.”

She’s also concerned about how ICE’s presence would make the city’s Micronesian residents feel. A compact with Micronesia allows its citizens from the Pacific Island nation to come to the United States to live, work and study without visas. 

Milan, about a 10-minute drive to the southeast, was majority Micronesian as of the 2020 census. Appleton doesn’t have as high of a percentage of Micronesians, but there are enough to warrant the local elementary school to have signs in both English and Chuukese, a Micronesian language.

Though language can be a barrier, relations between the city’s Micronesian and white residents are improving, Lhotka-Meyer said. The detention center could set back the progress. 

“If ICE opened in our community, I think it would make them feel a little targeted,” she said. 

In September, a group including clergy leaders and CURE, a Montevideo-based nonprofit, gathered in Appleton to demonstrate against the potential of an ICE detention center.

Therese Quinn was a local in attendance who felt compelled to speak out about it. News of ICE considering Appleton for a mass detention site was disturbing, she said.

Quinn has worked as a government contractor with people from Central America who were seeking asylum. She saw the difficulty they went through to come to the U.S. 

An ICE detention center filled with people like that would go against her values, she said. 

“These are my values of compassion and caring for people,” she said. “I’ve worked with immigrants and I feel like they’ve done so much just to be in this country.”  

Quinn preferred to meet in Montevideo to talk about the issue. She avoids bringing up politics in Appleton. 

One sentiment in town after the vigil was that, apart from Quinn, participants were “out-of-towners” who came to the city to tell residents what was best for it.

The stakes of the prison extend beyond Appleton, said Ryan Perez, operations director at COPAL, a statewide organization representing Latino families. Western Minnesota, including Montevideo and other nearby communities, has a sizable Latino population. 

“This is an Appleton issue in the sense that Appleton residents have a say and a voice in how that space is used,” Perez said. “And it’s a Minnesota and multi-state issue because people from communities across the state would be rounded up and put in that detention center for profit.” 

Minnesota currently has three ICE detention centers located in Freeborn, Sherburne and Kandiyohi counties. If Appleton were to open, it would be the only privately run prison in the state.

Most of the profits wouldn’t stay in the community, Perez said. At the same time, the removal of immigrants would hurt local economies across Greater Minnesota. Perez noted detainees would likely come in from other states as well like the Dakotas.

“These are families that during the day can be invisible in the towns because they’re working in factories, they’re working long hours,” Perez said. “In many cases it looks invisible, but its impact on the economy is highly felt.”

Hard economics

Appleton’s prison started as a city economic development project in 1990. Completed in 1992, the facility was a fitting replacement for a soybean field. The prison, after all, was meant to help the city overcome an agriculture downturn that decimated many a rural area in the 1980s. 

The scheme wasn’t without precedent. Other rural communities were getting into the incarceration business around the same time, building at least 245 rural prisons during the 1990s.

What happened next in Appleton can be described as a population yo-yo. From 1990 to 2000, the population jumped from 1,646 to 2,871. By 2010 it had dropped to 1,412.

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Population swelled over the first decade of the prison’s existence, during which a company now known as CoreCivic bought it in 1997. Part of the spike was from workers; most of it was from inmates. Puerto Rican prisoners were the first to fill the facility’s beds, followed later by Minnesotans, Coloradans, Idahoans and others.

By the late 2000s, the prison was in trouble financially. CoreCivic closed it in 2010, citing less demand for its services coinciding with Minnesota’s expansion of state-run corrections capacity.  

The company’s CEO talked about his intention to keep the closure temporary. 

“Our company is committed to finding another government partner for this prison,” stated Damon Hininger in an announcement in late 2009.

This reads a lot like the message that CoreCivic, Hininger still at the helm, put out about the prison this year.

“We continue to market our Prairie Correctional Facility (PCF) and explore opportunities with our government partners for which this site could be a viable solution,” the company stated in late October when asked if it was in talks with ICE to reopen the facility. “During this process, we take steps to ensure the facility is properly maintained.”

From a city government perspective, the prison’s potential reopening remains a benefit, said John Olinger, Appleton’s city administrator.

“Our population is only 1,300,” he said. “One of the major impacts (the closure) had on our community was the tax base and the utility rates. When they were here that was 1,600 people using and contributing to the treatment plant, water and sewer. All that revenue went away.”

To this day, the prison company accounts for about 30% of Appleton’s levy, a percentage that Olinger said would be far higher if the prison was open. Municipal water and sewer systems, built to serve a much larger population, don’t have enough tax revenue to sustain them. 

“We can pinpoint when utilities went into the red, and it’s when that facility closed,” Olinger said. 

Budget cuts were unavoidable. There hasn’t been enough money for capital equipment, as evidenced by late 1990s and early 2000s plow trucks still being used. 

The city’s housing stock suffered. Homes once occupied by prison workers are still empty today, if they haven’t already been demolished due to disrepair.

Olinger pointed out a recently demolished home, reduced to rubble, Tuesday. From there, he walked over to what used to be a bakery. The floor caved in, giving it the look of a building in a war zone.

Michael Borstad, known as Boulder Mike to his friends, works with the city to demolish run-down houses. This year alone he’s taken down five homes. He has demolished as many as 16 dilapidated homes in a year as part of the city’s plan to clear out buildings beyond repair.

An Appleton native, he said the prison’s shuttering was one of multiple blows over the years. The city lost its high school to consolidation and its PBS station to Granite Falls, a city about 40 miles away.

If the prison only reopens temporarily, he sees it leaving the town in limbo. A permanent usage is what’s needed.

“Yes it’d be great if it was open regardless, but does it create more chaos than good?” he asked. 

Locals take notice of work at the prison. A helicopter was reportedly at the site this fall. 

Activity at the prison draws attention, Olinger said, but the city doesn’t take it to mean it’ll open anytime soon. Even vacant prisons need upkeep. 

The city doesn’t know CoreCivic’s latest plans for the prison, Olinger said.

“From our perspective it’s a zoning issue,” he said. “It is within the city limits and it’s within the zoning class where prisons are allowed.” 

Opinions are split on the likelihood of CoreCivic reopening the prison. One resident heard nothing will happen anytime soon. For Lhotka-Meyer’s part, she thinks most people in town expect it to open. Perez said ICE received $45 billion in taxpayer dollars to expand detention, giving him every reason to believe the agency will use available facilities.

Lhotka-Meyer is most focused on realities in the city right now, the work that community champions are doing to better it. She meets with Kerry Kolke Bonk, a retired post officer clerk at the Appleton Heritage Center for a walk through the city’s history.

Along with running what is essentially a city museum and art space, Kolke Bonk led the creation of a memorial telling the stories of all 36 Appleton veterans who have died in service to their country. One of the men is Lhotka-Meyer’s brother, Jesse Lhotka, who died in Iraq in 2005.

On Veterans Day, Lhotka-Meyer drove through streets named after fallen military veterans, pointing out the positives in her community. A popular summer concert series, the draw of a nearby off-highway vehicle park, and reverence for military veterans on every corner.  

Appleton doesn’t have it easy, Lhotka-Meyer said, but it has civic pride that doesn’t waver regardless of the prison’s status.

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