On Thursday, we noted a post by Land Stewardship Project: LSP member leaders oppose ICE detention facility at Appleton prison.
We overlooked Tom Cherveny's typically fine reportage in the West Central Tribune, Opposition forms to possible use of Appleton prison by ICE:
Opposition is forming to stop a bid by CoreCivic to open a portion of its former Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton as a detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
More than 160 people attended a meeting Tuesday evening in Appleton called by an informal network of people who oppose the former prison's possible use as an ICE detention center.
Calling it “morally unjust and not compatible with Minnesota values,” organizer Amy Bacigalupo of Montevideo said a petition will be circulated and presented to legislators, county commissioners and city council members in the area. It will let them know that many in the region are opposed to the possible use of the facility as a detention center, Bacigalupo told the crowd.
She acknowledged that a decision on its use will not likely be a local one. If it happens, she said the opponents intend to organize and protest.
“We have learned over and over again that ICE holds immigrants and exiles in abusive and inhumane conditions. We oppose that,” said Athena Kildegaard of Morris, one of the organizers who addressed the crowd.
CoreCivic told elected officials who toured the shuttered facility in April that it was submitting a bid to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house up to 500 detainees in the St. Paul region. If the bid is awarded, detainees would arrive in 2021, Kelly Durham, state partnership relations representative with CoreCivic, told the elected officials in April. . . .
Read the entire article at the West Central Tribune.
Photo: The fence around CoreCivic's private prison at Appleton. Corrections Corporation of America rebranded itself as CoreCivic several years ago. We looked at some of the corporation's political giving in Minnesota in MN Republican Senate & House federal PACs took $5000 from CoreCivic PAC in 2018.
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