60 More Facilities House Detained Migrants As Trump Admin Pushes Biggest-Ever System Expansion
Dozens of local, state and federal jails and prisons are holding migrants facing deportation as the federal government pushes for expanded capacity and budgeted $45B for new immigration jails.
About 60 jails and prisons, including four run by private prison-focused firms CoreCivic and The Geo Group, have begun holding newly arrested migrants since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Bloomberg reported.
The two publicly traded firms — the nation's largest owners of prison real estate — stand to gain a flood of new contracts and huge increases in revenue as they help meet the Trump administration's demand for expanded immigration detention capacity.
The $45B for new immigration jails is part of the multitrillion-dollar One Big Beautiful Bill signed by Trump on Friday.
The Trump administration has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to arrest at least 3,000 people a day, or more than 1 million per year. ICE has struggled to meet that goal, though 1,000 arrests per day in June was already a significant surge from earlier numbers, according to Bloomberg.
Including facilities that had contracts to hold migrants before Trump’s inauguration, ICE had the capacity to hold more than 59,000 people as of late June, Bloomberg reported. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem previously said the administration wants to expand capacity to 100,000 available beds for detainees.
The expansion proposed would be the biggest ever of the country’s immigration detention system, Doris Meissner said to Bloomberg. Meissner directs the Migration Policy Institute's immigration policy program.
A new facility in Florida has garnered attention for the speed with which it was established and the rhetoric around the site, buried deep in the Florida Everglades.
The state’s new remote tent complex at a decommissioned airfield in the Everglades, officially named Alligator Alcatraz, "stood up in record time," according to the Florida Division of Emergency Management. The first detainees arrived last week.
While environmental groups have sued in an attempt to block further construction of the site, which is at or near a protected wildlife habitat, Trump said he hopes to see similar facilities nationwide, Reuters reported.
"We'd like to see them in many states," Trump said during a visit to the facility Tuesday, per Reuters.
The facility will cost about $450M annually and hold up to 5,000 people, officials estimate.
Trump wants Florida's efforts to serve as a model for other states, according to Bloomberg.
CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger said in February that he anticipates "perhaps the most significant growth in our company's history" over the next several years.
Geo Group CEO David Donahue said during a February earnings call that the rise in demand creates an opportunity "unlike any we've previously experienced." The administration's increase in immigration enforcement could result in an additional $1B per year for the company, Chief Financial Officer Mark Suchinski said.
Entities associated with the companies contributed more than $1M to Trump’s reelection effort, ABC News reported in November. The companies saw their stocks surge 80% the night of the presidential election.
