Will the closed private prison in western Minnesota be an ICE deportation hub?

Federal officials have been searching for a place to expand immigrant detention in Minnesota, and the shuttered private prison in Appleton remains a leading option.

A building permit filed with Appleton city officials shows at least one contractor has been working on nearly $1 million worth of upgrades at the prison since late last year. Work includes new rooftop heating and cooling units, plumbing and electrical wiring.

Marcin Gebala, from the Colorado-based contractor Reliant Mechanical Services, said his crews have traveled to Minnesota every few weeks to work at the site. He hopes to have the job wrapped up by the end of April and believes the prison will be ready to reopen by June.

“I heard it was going to be used by ICE. I’m just a subcontractor; they don’t tell us much.” Gebala said. He added that he has worked on another idle private prison that recently reopened to house immigrant detainees.

The Appleton prison, Prairie Correctional Facility, is owned by CoreCivic, which describes Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the company’s top government partner. The company recently reopened closed prisons in Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee for immigrant detainees.

CoreCivic remains tight-lipped about the possibility of the Appleton facility detaining immigrants. Brian Todd, government affairs manager, said the company continues “to take steps to ensure the facility is properly maintained.”

“CoreCivic continues to market our Prairie Correctional Facility and explore opportunities with our government partners for which this site could be a viable solution,” Todd said in a statement.

ICE claims it has detained 3,000 immigrants since Operation Metro Surge began Dec. 1. Detainees are increasingly being sent to other states because of capacity challenges.

The Department of Homeland Security has contracts with Freeborn, Kandiyohi and Sherburne counties to hold detainees, as well as space at the federal Whipple Building at Fort Snelling.

The three county jails have a combined capacity of about 1,000 beds. It is unclear how many people can be held at Whipple, which was generally used as a processing facility and to temporarily hold people appearing in immigration court.

ICE’s largest detention facilities are along the southern border. ICE is now looking to build its capacity nationwide with a network of facilities feeding larger detention hubs after Congress allocated $45 billion in July to expand the nation’s immigrant detention system.

Several of its proposed expansion efforts have been rebuffed in Minnesota.

On Jan. 7, the Carver County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a social media post it would not contract with ICE because it didn’t have enough space.

“Their proposal would have required more than half of our jail space, exceeding our daily capacity,” the statement read. “Facilitating this contract would make it impossible to meet the needs of Carver County.”

The Appleton prison has a capacity of roughly 1,600 beds, which would more than double ICE’s detention capacity in Minnesota.

Appleton is a small town of 1,350 in Swift County in western Minnesota. The city lost 250 jobs and faced fiscal challenges in 2010 when the private prison closed.

City Administrator John Olinger declined to speculate about the possibility of the facility reopening. But he acknowledged that residents are talking about it.