U.S. Taps Private Prison Industry For Expanding Immigrant Detention

The Trump administration is moving quickly to expand dramatically the nation’s capacity for detaining immigrants who do not have legal authorization to be in the U.S. The administration has largely turned to the for-profit, private prison industry to reopen or repurpose shuttered and aging facilities, many of which have been previously criticized for poor conditions and inadequate care.

In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced it will reopen Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J.

The detention facility, owned by private prison company GEO Group, has the capacity to hold about 1,000 people. It will become the largest ICE processing and detention center on the East Coast. The 15-year contract is valued at $1 billion, reports Stateline

Private prison operator CoreCivic announced it will reopen the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. The family detention site can house up to 2,400 ICE detainees, including children. The new contract will run through at least March 2030.

Private immigration detention is growing fast — again. The Trump administration is rapidly expanding immigration detention through billion-dollar contracts with private prison companies, including GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Dozens of facilities may reopen across at least eight states, including places with long histories of abuse. w

While some communities and states are concerned about oversight and are pushing back, others see economic opportunity.

Trump isn’t the first president to rely on private contractors to detain immigrants. Tens of thousands were held in private facilities under both the Obama and Biden administrations. The new contracts mark the start of a planned expansion led by Trump’s border adviser, Tom Homan, who has called for boosting ICE’s detention capacity to at least 100,000 people.

Trump has repeatedly touted his goal of staging the “largest deportation operation in American history,” vowing to deport millions of people. There are an estimated 11 million immigrants who are not legally authorized to live in the U.S.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told attendees of the 2025 Border Security Expo in Arizona this week that he wants the agency to become as efficient at deporting immigrants as e-commerce giant Amazon is at delivering packages.

As of March 23, ICE had 47,892 people in custody. Yet the agency requested funding for just 34,000 beds in fiscal year 2025, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE, in February, released at least 160 detainees after its network of at least 107 facilities reached 109% capacity, according to internal government statistics obtained by CBS News.

Private immigration detention dates back to the 1980s, when companies such as CoreCivic — then called Corrections Corporation of America — began operating detention facilities. In 1984, the company converted a Houston motel into a makeshift detention center. Since then, the federal government’s use of private contractors has dramatically increased.

Today, nearly 90% of immigrants in ICE custody are held in privately operated facilities, according to the latest analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.