Rachel Maddow

Senator Bluen is one of the local officials who's attended protests against that facility.

And last week at one of those protests, he specifically called out the inexplicable

$150 million price tag the Trump administration agreed to pay for an empty warehouse in Salt Lake City, which appears to be tens of millions of dollars more than the property is worth.

He said, quote, out there, someone is making a whole bunch of money profiteering off the suffering of human lives.

Joining us now is Utah State Senator Nate Bluin, who is also a candidate for Congress this year.

Senator Bluin, thank you very much for being here.

I appreciate you taking the time.

So what do your constituents think about this proposed facility?

I know that Salt Lake City felt like it dodged a bullet.

There had been an original plan to buy a warehouse that had then been scuttled after the owner sort of talked out of it.

But then ICE came in and bought a second facility.

How do your constituents feel about it?

Well, let me ask you about that price tag part of it.

It does seem unusual that they seem to be wildly overpaying for a facility like this, but it is also a pattern that we're starting to see emerge with other facilities that they're buying around the country.

Certainly, there's been reporting similar to what you found in Utah, in Georgia just over the past few days, and we've seen it in other places as well.

Do you as a state senator or does anybody acting locally in Utah have any recourse to try to figure out how the price was arrived at?

Who, in your words, might be profiteering off of this type of planned facility?

Is there any way to follow the money here?

Utah State Senator, congressional candidate, Nate Bluin.

Thank you very much for being here.