According to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the agency she leads is following the law, giving people due process, and ridding the country of undesirables who have no business on U.S. soil.
Many would disagree with her. Many feel that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has transformed from the DHS sub-agency started in 2003 to fight cross-border crime into a league of secret police.
To nobody’s surprise, the Trump administration is working with the private prison industry to detain people ICE arrests, with the intention of deportation either to their home countries or to the CECOT facility in El Salvador, which is holding at least 238 migrants, according to reports. Critics say the detentions are illegal.
But what do we really know about ICE’s relationship to private prison corporations? Noem does not talk openly about it, and neither does anyone else in Trump’s administration. But information about it is public. So here are five things to know:
- The federal government is the most important client of GEO Group, a Florida-based company that builds detention and mental health facilities, along with housing and transporting inmates. According to its website, it manages 72,000 beds in 54 facilities. In February, the company was awarded a $1 billion, 15-year contract to establish a 1,000-bed facility at Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J. This is where the city’s mayor Ras Baraka was arrested while visiting the center with three New Jersey legislators, while insisting the feds did not have proper permits to open it.
- The Trump administration plans to expand ICE detention centers across 10 statesto help in its goal of deporting 1 million people annually, according to the ACLU. Currently, ICE has a budget of $9.6 billion with 41,000 beds. In April, the agency reported holding 48,000 people. Its plan is to add as many as 60,000 beds this year, according to USA TODAY. Meanwhile, the funding bill passed by Congress increased money for ICE, which allows it to increase contracting. GEO Group and others, including CoreCivic, and Sabot Consulting have submitted proposals.
- In fact, the federal government is asking private corrections companies to build new detention centers, including the reuse of dormant facilities, according to NPR. But some of them have proven to be problematic. For example, ICE closed the Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama in 2022 over unsanitary conditions, and FCI Dublin in California, where the U.S. Bureau of Prisons reportedly agreed to pay 103 female inmates who alleged sexual assault more than $115 million. The Trump administration will use the proposals from the private companies to determine how the facilities will ultimately be used.
- The money behind all of this is immense. That’s because locking people up is big business. Private prison stocks have been soaring since the 2024 election, triggered by Trump’s campaign promise to target undocumented migrants. According to MoneyMorning.com, GEO Group stock went up 150% just before the week of the inauguration. CoreCivic saw a 75% jump just after the inauguration. Revenue for Axon Enterprises went up 33.64%. The detention-driven expansion could total up to $45 billion over the next two years.
- This relationship is hardly new. The blueprint for it was laid with the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, signed by former President Bill Clinton. By 2006, Corrections Corp. of America (now CoreCivic) was accepting ICE detainees in Texas as part of George W. Bush’s initiative to detain undocumented migrants. The Obama administration moved to end the use of private prisons, but was also criticized for allowing the corporations to be involved in immigrant cases. During the first Trump term, Obama’s decision was reversed. Joe Biden pledged to end private prison contracts, but kept immigrant detention centers. Then Trump came in again and reversed Biden’s decision, keeping the door open to do business with private prisons.
