Private Prison Companies See Revenues Surge From Ice Detentions

By Benjamin J. Hulac | Washington Correspondent For the NJ Spotlight News

WASHINGTON — Government contracts fueled a financial boom this year for the two private prison companies that dominate the U.S. immigration detention industry.

The industry stands to gain further as the Trump administration expands the network of privately run detention sites nationally, targeting a goal of deporting 1 million immigrants this year.

From the detention facilities that private-prison firm GEO Group owns or leases, revenue for the second quarter this year jumped 12% from last year, driven largely by new contracts at facilities like Delaney Hall in Newark.

“Congrats again on the quarter and the fantastic growth opportunities ahead of us,” Joe Gomes, a financial analyst with Noble Capital Markets, told GEO Group executives on an earnings call last week.

Big rewards

Revenue for CoreCivic, the other major company in the nation’s corporate prison industry, rose about 10% over the same period, the company said. CoreCivic operates the Elizabeth Detention Center.

“Our business is perfectly aligned with the demands of this moment,” said Damon Hininger, CEO of CoreCivic, who praised a recent federal court ruling that cleared a path for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities in New Jersey. “We strongly believe that this was the right decision,” he said.

Early in the second Trump administration, the private prison industry is riding a lucrative wave of government contracts and eyeing steps to grow further. Those plans include opening mothballed facilities, using GPS tracking devices to monitor undocumented immigrants and expanding air- and ground-based transportation of detainees.

The private operators are also looking to profit by expanding their reach by using military sites to hold detainees. Executives at GEO Group and CoreCivic said they were open to operating on military sites.

George Zoley, executive chairman of the GEO Group, said his company had reached agreements with a military contractor so that GEO could “pursue potential procurements that may be issued for operational support services at military sites.”

NJ military site

The U.S. government plans to use Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst for deportation flights and to hold between 1,000 and 3,000 undocumented immigrants there, according to plans NJ Spotlight News first reported.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also publicly approved Camp Atterbury in Indiana and the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to hold undocumented immigrants.

‘The fact that there are new beds opening up today does not mean that they’re going to close when Trump leaves office’ — Molly Linhorst, attorney, ACLU of New Jersey

Lifting this financially lucrative wave for private prison firms is the roughly $170 billion in federal funding Congress allocated for the Trump administration, through a recently enacted law, to use on its hardline immigration agenda.

“I think it is an unprecedented opportunity for them,” Molly Linhorst, a staff attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey, said in an interview with NJ Spotlight News.

“There are billions going to immigration facilities,” Linhorst said. “The private prison companies are by no means strangers to the federal government.”

Billions to be spent

Both companies lobbied Congress on legislation that turned into the law that contained the approximately $170 billion portion of new funding, federal lobbying records show.

Zoley, of GEO Group, said the Delaney Hall site “remains in the process of ramping up,” describing its opening in February as an “important milestone.”

NJ can’t block private immigrant detention centers, judges ruleDelaney Hall, which can hold 1,000 detainees, is expected to make the company more than $60 million over its first year running, Zoley said.

The GEO Group has contracts to run 21 detention facilities nationwide, and the number of beds in its control — industry shorthand for how many people can be detained — grew from 15,000 to 20,000 from April through June this year. “This represents more than one-third of the current ICE detention levels, which we estimate to be approximately 57,000 beds nationwide,” Zoley said, adding that the company “stocked up the inventory of our monitoring devices” used to track immigrants who are not detained but after “ICE detention capacity” runs out.

The Trump administration has a goal of reaching 100,000 beds for ICE by the end of the year, an objective that could be met with the use of outdoor tents and military sites, like the joint base in New Jersey.

Whatever immigration detention apparatus is erected during the second Trump term will linger beyond, Linhorst predicted, noting the 15-year contract the U.S. government reached with GEO Group to run Delaney Hall.

“The fact that there are new beds opening up today does not mean that they’re going to close when Trump leaves office,” Linhorst said.

“Right now, it’s a huge moment,” Linhorst added. Yet what decisions the U.S. government reaches with the industry will carry on, she said. “There’s a lot of motive to continue to fill these beds.”