In the final months of the Obama administration, both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security debated phasing out contracts with private prisons, with the former committing to it in an August 2016 announcement. But following Donald Trump’s swearing-in and a series of executive orders designed to make just about all undocumented immigrants vulnerable to arrest, detainment, and deportation, private prison companies are set “to cash in on Trump’s deportation regime”:
When Trump got to Washington, the biggest prison companies were already making more money than ever from immigrant detention, and today their prospects have never looked rosier. Fueled by the administration’s deportation dragnet, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has predicted a surge in its daily population of detainees, from around 34,000 in July to more than 51,000 over the next year—and prison companies are more than happy to accommodate. In April, GEO Group executives won the administration’s first private immigration detention contract, for a facility in Conroe, Texas, that’s expected to bring in $44 million annually. This year the company also started operating an ICE detention center in Folkston, Georgia, that could boost its revenue another $21 million.
Another opportunity for growth might be farther north. Under Trump, immigration enforcement has shifted, with fewer migrants apprehended at the border and many more caught in raids throughout the country’s interior. That means ICE is hoping to incarcerate more of its detainees in the heartland, near where they’re arrested. “It’s good business sense to have bed capacity in close proximity to where our operations are,” says Philip Miller, deputy executive associate director for ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations.
In Indiana, the immigrant rights activists and Elkhart community members are fighting back against a proposed facility, knowing that more prisons mean more immigrant abuses, more immigrant torture, and more immigrant deaths. At California’s Adelanto Detention Facility—a privately operated facility operated by prison “profiteers” GEO Group—immigrants rights advocates have alleged “insufficient medical care and poor conditions” since it’s 2011 opening. Within a three month period this year alone, three Adelanto detainees died.
“In October, ICE issued a request for information about potential locations for up to 3,000 new detention beds within 180 miles of Chicago, Detroit, Salt Lake City, and St. Paul, Minnesota,” reports Mother Jones. But not without protest. In Elkhart—“a decisive county for Donald Trump”—Rafael Correa, a community member protesting the proposed facility, said “I know people who are thinking about, if this happens, they’re packing up and leaving”:
One of those players is CoreCivic—formerly known as the Corrections Corporation of America, or CCA—which in early December proposed a $100 million detention center in Elkhart, Indiana, across a county road from the local landfill and jail. The site, within 180 miles of Chicago and Detroit, would initially have 1,240 beds but could later be expanded to hold 1,400 people, making it one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country.
CoreCivic’s construction proposal will go before Elkhart County commissioners early next year, and ICE is planning to ask for formal bids around Chicago in 2018. In the meantime, a coalition of local residents and immigrant rights activists are leading a campaign against CoreCivic, arguing that the detention center would drive out immigrant workers and exacerbate an already acute labor shortage in the booming manufacturing town.
Still one organizer, Richard Aguirre, said “most Elkhart officials and business leaders have so far been reluctant to criticize the proposal publicly, and it still has a solid chance of being approved next year.” Of course, all of this takes money, and that’s an issue left to Congress:
Expanding the country’s immigration detention network to more than 51,000 beds will require $1.2 billion from Congress, though it’s unclear if that kind of money will be made available. The Senate’s budget bill would boost detention funds by 7 percent but would only cover about 39,000 beds, while the House’s bill would fund about 44,000. “My best guess is that ICE’s final funding for detention will be somewhere between those goalposts,” says Mary Small, a policy director for Detention Watch Network, an advocacy group that monitors immigrant detention. “But I also think it’s very important to say that in this Congress, who the hell knows?”
Much like Donald Trump has enriched his empire through the labor of immigrants, prison profiteers are seeking to make a fortune off brown and black bodies. CoreCivic stocks went up 140% after Trump’s election, with Geo Group going up 98%. Rather than debating more prisons, more detention, more deportation, and more misery, Congress should take up legislation the vast majority of Americans regardless of party support, like the DREAM Act. Of course, that would mean freedom for hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant youth, and this administration won’t put up with that without a fight.