SWINDLE
Patrick's Plan for a Concentration Camp in Appleton, MN
That is actually his name. Patrick Swindle, CEO of CoreCivic, one of the largest private prison companies in America. Right now his company has its eye on a small town in western Minnesota that CoreCivic already gutted once and apparently decided wasn’t gutted enough.
Appleton, Minnesota. Population roughly 1,354. Poverty rate about 28%. Declining.
The Prairie Correctional Facility has been sitting empty on the south edge of town since CoreCivic closed it in 2010, took the jobs, and left. For sixteen years they’ve kept what the company calls a “core staffing complement” on site, maintaining it, warming it, waiting for the moment the math worked again.
The math works again.
Here’s what nobody has put together yet, because it’s buried in SEC filings that require a specific kind of anger to read carefully:
CoreCivic’s Q1 2026 Form 10-Q, filed with federal regulators May 6th of this year, lists Prairie Correctional Facility as an “idle facility” being, and this is their exact language, “actively marketed” to potential government customers. The building’s book value increased nearly a million dollars in a single quarter. On an empty building. In a town of barely thirteen hundred people.
You don’t put money into something you’re planning to keep empty.
One month ago, Patrick Swindle told Wall Street analysts his company was anticipating “increased demand from federal partners in the second half of the year“ and was “well-positioned to meet that demand given our readily available capacity, in both existing and idle facilities.”
Second half of the year is July. July is three weeks away.
There is no public contract yet. No ribbon cutting. No cheerful little press release written in the dead-eyed language corporations use when they are about to monetize human captivity.
CoreCivic’s playbook is not a secret. They have been activating idle facilities all over the map: Dilley in Texas, West Tennessee, California City, Diamondback in Oklahoma, and the Midwest Regional Reception Center in Kansas. Idle facility appears in corporate filings as “actively marketed.” Government contract follows. Local objections get lawyered into paste. Hiring begins. Detainees arrive.
Minnesota has a law meant to keep private prison contracting out of the state’s correctional system. But immigration detention lives in the murkier federal swamp, where IGSAs, local agreements, and preemption arguments do the kind of work polite people pretend not to understand until the buses are already moving.
The lawyers have already billed the hours.
The only thing missing is the announcement.
The mayor of Appleton and other local officials have supported reopening the prison before. They are not wrong to want jobs. Twenty-eight percent poverty is a genuine emergency and CoreCivic is offering the only life raft in view.
But CoreCivic built the flood.
They left in 2010. They created the desperation they are now generously offering to temporarily relieve, for as long as the federal contract holds, at which point they can leave again and Appleton will still be there, smaller, older, poorer, waiting for the next company to show up with a deal.
That’s not economic development.
That’s a protection racket with a corporate wellness program.
DO SOMETHING
Call Appleton before the announcement drops. John Olinger, City Administrator: (320) 289-1363. County Commissioner Gary Hendrickx: (320) 289-2649. Ask them if they know the building’s book value went up nearly a million dollars last quarter. Ask them what “second half of the year” means. Ask them if they’ve heard from CoreCivic recently. Their answers, or their silence, are the story.
Make Patrick Swindle’s quote follow him everywhere. “We anticipate increased demand in the second half of the year and we are well-positioned with our idle facilities.” That quote, from a public earnings call, is the announcement before the announcement. Put it in front of every Minnesota legislator, Governor Walz’s office, every immigrant rights organization in the Upper Midwest. CoreCivic’s media line is (615) 263-3107. Call them. Ask about Appleton specifically. Make them say “no comment” on the record.
Get to Appleton before CoreCivic does. The window to stop this is before the IGSA is signed. Not after the press release. Not after the hiring fair. Not after the first bus of detainees rolls in from the Twin Cities.
Three hours from St. Paul.
The building is ready.
The company is ready.
The CEO has told his shareholders what kind of demand he expects.
Somebody in Minnesota needs to be ready to answer him.
Closer to the Edge is reader-powered independent journalism.
How many other contracts are the U.S. Government paying that is not being used or serviced? Properties Tempertantrump may sell to his personal business at a low price in order to resell for excessive gain.
Why didn’t DOGE cut funding for an unused warehouse? They should have been funding housing or healthcare instead. Misappropriated funds.