pshene(Agent99)

BREAKING: FRAUD & ABUSE — Why did ICE pay a Trump donor MORE THAN SIX TIMES the original asking price for a shuttered Minnesota prison? While Republicans have spent months screaming about fraud in Minnesota, Trump’s own Homeland Security Department just overpaid for a single empty prison by more than taxpayers lost in the entire Feeding Our Future scandal. According to a KARE 11 investigation, CoreCivic, the private prison giant, emailed Minnesota’s Department of Corrections in May 2025 offering to sell its shuttered Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton for $75 million. That price even included the upgrades needed to reopen it. Minnesota passed, citing staffing and the prison’s remote location in a town of fewer than 1,400 people. A year later, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security bought the same 34-year-old prison, empty for 16 years, to use as an ICE detention center. SEC records show the price: $495,639,588. That’s MORE THAN SIX TIMES CORECIVIC’S ASKING PRICE, a $420 million difference. “It’s unexplainable!” said Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell. “Obviously, I was stunned... I still can’t figure it out.” Asked whether taxpayers were taken for a ride, he said, “I don’t know how they could justify this amount.” Now follow the money. CoreCivic donated half a million dollars to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee, and its CEO made significant personal contributions to Trump-affiliated committees. Shortly after Trump took office, then-CEO Damon Hininger told investors to expect “perhaps the most significant growth in our company’s history.” He wasn’t kidding. The same day CoreCivic announced the Minnesota sale, it sold a Kansas facility for $238 million. A month earlier, it sold two California prisons for a combined $1.5 billion. Total cost for four prisons: more than $2.2 billion. And CoreCivic will also get paid to run them, estimating about $75 million a year from the Minnesota site alone. CoreCivic declined an on-camera interview with KARE-11. In a statement, it said independent appraisers used a “cost-based methodology” and stressed in bold that “the federal government ultimately determined the sale price.” In other words: don’t blame us, the government chose to pay it. But why would the federal government pay such an inflated price? DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s office hasn’t answered KARE 11’s questions. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office already warned in September that ICE’s buying spree has “the potential to result in waste,” noting ICE hadn’t assessed whether owning these facilities is affordable. That’s the same agency that spent $1.07 billion on 11 warehouses, then started selling most of them, after sinking $20 million into costs it can’t recover. Fraud and abuse, anyone? Rep. Betty McCollum, who calls CoreCivic’s owners Trump “mega donors,” says Congress must investigate “to protect American taxpayers.” When a donor’s company gets $420 million more than it asked for, that’s not efficiency. That’s a bill you’re paying for the price of corruption. Please like and share if you think the entire Trump administration is one BIG GRIFT!