Private prisons gear up for Trump deportation bonanza

Private prisons are getting ready to cash in on what Donald Trump has billed as ‘the largest domestic deportation operation in American history’.

Tom Homan, who will run the deportation effort, says ICE will need enough beds to detain a minimum of 100,000 migrants. Picture: Getty Images

Private prisons and other companies that provide detention services are getting ready to cash in on what president-elect Donald Trump has billed as “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”.

That includes scouring for as many detention beds as possible in their networks of facilities, and scouting sites for new buildings to house migrants.

Some executives are considering whether to take up the controversial work of detaining families or unaccompanied children. Others are preparing to hire new staff and snapping up well-connected lobbyists.

“This is, to us, an unprecedented opportunity,” George Zoley, executive chairman of the GEO Group, a private prison company, told investors on an earnings call days after the election.

Pulling off a deportation on the scale Mr Trump has promised would constitute an unprecedented logistical feat for the US government, involving identifying, locating, arresting, detaining, adjudicating and transporting potentially millions of men, women, and children.

The actual scope of Mr Trump’s plans remains unclear. He repeatedly promised mass deportations during his first term in office. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported about 935,000 people who had been living in the US illegally under his administration, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute – fewer than Barack Obama.

The Biden administration, which deported relatively few people in its first year, deported more than 271,000 in fiscal year 2024 – a 10-year record – according to newly released figures from ICE. The administration deported 545,000 over its four years.

Mr Trump and his advisers have said in recent weeks that they intend to focus initially on migrants who crossed the border illegally and have a criminal background, causing some allies to worry that Mr Trump may water down his plans.

Tom Homan, who was chosen by Trump to run the deportation effort, told CNN that ICE would need enough beds to detain a minimum of 100,000 migrants. The agency currently has funding to maintain 41,500 beds.

The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, has estimated that deporting one million people in one year would cost $US88bn ($140bn), a figure that includes expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing and removal. There were an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the US as of 2022.

GEO, which currently houses about 40 per cent of ICE detainees, is looking at a potential doubling of all its services, Mr Zoley said.

Mr Zoley said GEO had enough empty or idle detention beds to quickly spin up the number of migrants it detains from a current 13,500 to more than 31,000. They would bring GEO more than $US400m in annual revenues if reactivated for a mass deportation, CEO Brian Evans said. The company also said it could move hundreds of thousands of people as they boost air and ground transportation.

Under its subsidiary BI Incorporated, GEO holds the ICE contract for electronic monitoring of migrants awaiting court dates, which could be increased exponentially from a present 182,500, said Wayne Calabrese, president and chief operating officer.

“We have assured ICE of our capability to rapidly scale up to monitor and oversee several hundreds of thousands, or even several millions, of individuals,” he said.

CoreCivic, the other major player in ICE detention centres, had a similar message for investors after the election. The company believes it could quickly bring its detention capacity to 25,000 beds by bringing unused ones online, including at a facility previously used to hold families in Dilley, Texas, CEO Damon Hininger said.

The Biden administration chose to close the site earlier this year, but CoreCivic kept it in “warm status”, Mr Hininger said.

CoreCivic has also identified other sites that could be used for detaining entire families, should the Trump administration decide to do so, Mr Hininger said. The company hasn’t previously detained unaccompanied children, who are typically housed by charities, and a statement on its website says, “We have not, do not and will not operate facilities for the purpose of housing unaccompanied migrant children.”

But in an interview, Mr Hininger said he was “very willing to have that conversation”.

“We’ve had those conversations in the past,” he said. “We can handle that population, for sure, in a safe and humane way.”

Mr Trump transition officials have told CoreCivic that the incoming president is considering emergency orders to allow detention operators to hire staff more quickly, accelerating a background-check process that sometimes can take up to six months, Mr Hininger said. He also expects emergency orders to accelerate the normal competitive bidding process for immigration-related contracts.

In addition to identifying already-existing beds it could open, CoreCivic is also exploring adding new buildings or temporary facilities on land it already owns, Mr Hininger said.

One thing that is different for both CoreCivic and GEO this time around is that they hold less bank debt, said Brian Violino, an analyst for Wedbush Securities who covers both companies, making them less vulnerable to public outrage.

During the prior administration, the outcry against immigrant detentions led some banks to withdraw funding from the companies, he said. Now, they don’t need that capital to bring new or idle facilities on-board.

Representatives of GEO Group and BI Incorporated didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for private-prison industry group Day 1 Alliance said in a statement that its members offer “healthcare services, recreational amenities, and on-site or online courtrooms, among other features” to detained migrants, and “are subject to multiple layers of oversight and accountability that often exceeds that of their public sector counterparts”.

To bolster its ties to the incoming administration, GEO Group recently hired a Trump-connected lobbying firm called Continental Strategy.

The Florida firm is run by Carlos Trujillo, who advised Mr Trump on Latino voters and immigration issues during the campaign. It also employs Katie Wiles, daughter of Mr Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Both CoreCivic and GEO – through their executive leadership or political-action committees – contributed heavily to Mr Trump’s re-election efforts.

Smaller companies involved in federal immigration detentions are also preparing to ramp up. Earlier this month, Asset Protection & Security Services, based in Corpus Christi, Texas, signed an agreement with Reeves County officials to bring a 3700-bed former prison back online, which it could potentially lease to the federal government for immigrant detention, Asset founder Scott Mandel said.

Mr Mandel said he was also interested in detaining families and children, noting that his company was previously contracted to house more than a thousand unaccompanied minors in San Antonio at Lackland Air Force Base in 2021 – and that they brought the facility online in just 14 days.

“Our subcontractors have been on standby and ready to go,” said Gwen Carson, president of Classic Air Charter, a Florida-based company that has been a main contractor of deportation flights for the federal government. “It would be a blessing for Classic Air to help in cleaning up our country.”

Classic Air received a contract worth $US880m from 2017 to 2023 for charter flights. In fiscal year 2023, nearly 149,000 noncitizens were transported by charter flight, according to ICE.

The Wall Street Journal