DAILY TRIFECTA: Putting The Prison-Industrial Complex On ICE

Contracting disease

THE SET-UP: Last week was the week Trump put the “mass” in mass deportations. That was my takeaway on Friday after gathering deportation-related news stories over the previous three days … a search that netted dozens of examples from around the country (which you can see here). It was also the week that ICE raided a meatpacker in Omaha. That raid was accompanied by rumors of similar raids at JBS Foods, a globe-spanning meatpacking corporation. JBS later revealed it had not been targeted. Perhaps not coincidentally, JBS gave $5 million to Trump’s inauguration. Whether or not they bought an exemption is an open question. That they might feel compelled to buy an exemption is not.

The agriculture, hospitality and construction industries have been bracing for the worst since Trump won last November. Last week, their fears materialized. And it became a problem. Amazingly enough, Trump responded last Friday afternoon by directing ICE to stop targeting farms, meatpackers, hotels and restaurants. It made sense, both economically and politically. Economically, Trump simply cannot afford a spike in grocery prices. Politically, the backlash was intense … in Omaha and around the country. The hardworking people ICE snatched lacked the face tattoos and rap sheets Trump and FOX News feature to great effect. They did not lack in support from friends, neighbors and employers.

But Trump’s reversal only lasted the weekend.

Late yesterday, The Washington Post reported on the reversal of his reversal. And early this morning, I found more a dozen local news stories touting Trump’s exemption … an exemption that no longer existed. One wonders how many workers were lulled into a false sense of security and, perhaps, goaded into a trap.

Yet, there is one industry that welcomes their coming detention: private prisons. Since Trump’s election, CoreCivic and Geo Group have seen their stock prices rise by 56% and 73% respectively. They are, according to AP, “forecasting hundreds of millions of dollars in new ICE profits.” To be fair, they did the groundwork. CoreCivic lavished $500,000 on Trump’s inauguration. And Geo Group placed an ace in the hole—current Attorney General Pam Bondi is their “former” lobbyist. - jp

TITLE: ICE is using no-bid contracts, boosting big firms, to get more detention beds
https://apnews.com/article/immigration-detention-centers-ice-deportations-trump-e92b67a388f041b84593d7a29fd93c54

EXCERPTS: The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth, Kansas as part of a surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued without seeking competitive bids.

ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” for thousands more detention beds, and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the Nashville, Tennessee, area and another giant firm, The Geo Group Inc., headquartered in southern Florida.

That push faces resistance. Leavenworth filed a lawsuit against CoreCivic after it tried to reopen without city officials signing off on the deal, quoting a federal judge’s past description of the now-shuttered prison as “a hell hole.” The case in Leavenworth serves as another test of the limits of the Republican president’s unusually aggressive tactics to force migrant removals.

To get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts. One pays $73 million to a company led by former federal immigration officials for “immigration enforcement support teams” to handle administrative tasks, such as helping coordinate removals, triaging complaints or telling ICE if someone is a risk to community safety.

Just last week , Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants — and earn $66 million in annual revenue.

“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” said CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger during an earnings call last month with shareholders.

A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation measure approved last month by the House includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention, a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that legislation.

When Trump started his second term in January, CoreCivic and Geo had around 20 idle facilities, partly because of sentencing reforms that reduced prison populations. But the Trump administration wants to more than double the existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds and — if private prison executives’ predictions are accurate — possibly to more than 150,000.

ICE declared a national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico as part of its justification for authorizing nine five-year contracts for a combined 10,312 beds without “Full and Open Competition.”

Only three of the nine potential facilities were listed in ICE’s document: Leavenworth, a 2,560-bed CoreCivic-owned facility in California City, California, and an 1,800-bed Geo-owned prison in Baldwin, Michigan.

The agreement for the Leavenworth facility hasn’t been released, nor have documents for the other two sites. CoreCivic and Geo Group officials said last month on earnings calls that ICE used what are known as letter contracts, meant to speed things up when time is critical.

Charles Tiefer, a contract expert and professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School, said letter contracts normally are reserved for minor matters, not the big changes he sees ICE making to previous agreements.

“I think that a letter contract is a pathetic way to make big important contracts,” he said.

ICE has used contract modifications to reopen shuttered lockups like the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility in Newark, New Jersey, and a 2,500-bed facility in Dilley, Texas, offering no explanations why new, competitively bid contracts weren’t sought.

The Newark facility, with its own history of problems, resumed intakes May 1, and disorder broke out at the facility Thursday night. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who previously was arrested there and accused of trespassing, cited reports of a possible uprising, and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed four escapes.

The contract modification for Dilley, which was built to hold families and resumed operations in March, calls its units “neighborhoods” and gives them names like Brown Bear and Blue Butterfly.

The financial details for the Newark and Dilley contract modifications are blacked out in online copies, as they for more than 50 other agreements ICE has signed since Trump took office. ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment.

TITLE: Oklahoma’s closed private prisons eyed as ICE detention centers
https://www.publicradiotulsa.org/local-regional/2025-06-16/oklahomas-closed-private-prisons-eyed-as-ice-detention-centers

EXCERPTS: On an earnings call last month, CEO of CoreCivic Damon Heninger said most of the company’s dormant or underused holdings will be revitalized, and Oklahoma is especially attractive.

“So our capacity at both our Diamondback facility, our North Fork facility right there on I-40 west of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma City is usually a very big hub for air transportation for ICE and Marshal Service, so it checks a lot of boxes with those two facilities, and again, I think both of those will be very attractive to ICE,” said Heninger.

The city manager of Sayre, where North Fork Correctional Facility is located, said he is not aware of plans to reopen the prison but that he likely wouldn’t be informed by the company in any case.

Officials in Watonga, where Diamondback Correctional Facility is located, weren’t immediately available for comment.

CoreCivic, a private prison management company that’s seen its stock price jump 56% since President Donald Trump’s November reelection, has already inked a deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to use Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing to hold migrants.

The state of Oklahoma cut ties with the Cimarron facility in 2020 after a string of problems, including the deadliest prison fight in the state’s history.

A spokeswoman for the state, Kay Thompson, said the Department of Corrections “has nothing to do” with the contracts between the feds and CoreCivic.

TITLE: New ICE detention center, largest in Michigan, ready to house detainees
https://www.mlive.com/news/2025/06/new-ice-detention-center-largest-in-michigan-ready-to-house-detainees.html

EXCERPT: North Lake Correctional Facility, a former northern Michigan prison that’s now the largest immigration detention center in the Midwest, has opened.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Monday, June 16 that the 1,800-bed facility in Baldwin is ready to house immigrants who have been detained.

“The facility is set to start accepting detainees today,” the agency said in an email.

North Lake Correctional Facility, owned and operated by private prison company GEO Group, is reopening under a “multi-year contract” with ICE that’s expected to generate $70 million in its first year.

“We expect that our company-owned North Lake Facility in Michigan will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace,” GEO Executive Chairman George Zoley said in the statement.

As the only for-profit prison in Michigan, North Lake has been closed since the Biden administration ended all federal contracts with private prison companies in 2022.