ICE and the Private Detention Machine

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detains more people than any other law enforcement agency in the United States. In fiscal year 2024, the average daily ICE detention population exceeded 46,000 — the highest number ever recorded. This represents people held without criminal conviction, often for weeks or months, in facilities that range from inadequate to life-threatening.

People detained by ICE have not necessarily committed any crime. Civil immigration detention is an administrative function — people are held while their immigration cases are processed. They have no right to a public defender. Many face deportation to countries they haven't visited in decades, or where they face documented persecution.

The Trump administration's 2025 mass deportation program, funded with an unprecedented $45 billion congressional appropriation for detention infrastructure, aims to process one million deportations per year. GEO Group and CoreCivic — the two largest private prison operators in the US — describe this as an "unprecedented opportunity."

The private prison industry in the United States has bet its growth trajectory on immigration detention. GEO Group and CoreCivic — which together operate the majority of private ICE detention facilities — each exceeded $1 billion in revenue from ICE contracts alone in 2025.

When the Trump administration announced its mass deportation plan, GEO Group's executive chairman Wayne Huizenga Jr. told investors the plan represented "unprecedented opportunity" and projected "$800 million to $1 billion in incremental annualized revenues." CoreCivic similarly told investors it expected "significant" growth from increased detention demand.

These companies' business model requires filling beds. Their revenue depends on the number of human beings detained, not on any outcome that benefits those people or the public. They have spent millions lobbying Congress for stricter immigration enforcement and more detention beds — directly shaping the policy that generates their revenue.

In These Times documented that GEO Group and CoreCivic have donated millions to members of Congress serving on committees that set immigration detention appropriations. The conflict of interest is explicit: private detention companies fund the elections of the legislators who decide how many people to detain, and at what cost per bed.

OpenSecrets data shows that GEO Group spent over $6.4 million on federal lobbying in 2020, and CoreCivic spent over $3.5 million. Combined with their PAC contributions, these companies have invested tens of millions in shaping immigration policy since 2000.

This is the definition of regulatory capture: the regulated industry directly funds the regulators. The result is a detention system whose scale is set not by public safety needs, criminality rates, or immigration patterns — but by corporate revenue projections.

The DHS Office of Inspector General has repeatedly documented inadequate medical care, inappropriate solitary confinement, and preventable deaths in ICE detention facilities. Between fiscal year 2021 and 2024, at least 41 people died in ICE custody. The OIG has found systemic failures in medical care at multiple facilities — including delayed or denied access to necessary treatment for serious conditions.

ACLU investigations have documented particular failures at privately operated facilities, where staffing is kept minimal to maximize margins. Reports have documented: people with serious mental illness placed in prolonged solitary confinement; people with cancer denied treatment; people who died of conditions that were treatable had they been seen by a doctor.

ICE detention is civil, not criminal. The people who die in these facilities have not been convicted of any crime. They are held at the pleasure of a federal agency whose facilities are operated by companies with a financial interest in minimizing costs.

Whether you call it detention, incarceration, or something else, the function is the same: taking people from their homes, families, and communities and holding them in cages until they are expelled or released. The US does this at a scale unmatched by any comparable liberal democracy. Canada, the UK, and Germany all process far higher per-capita immigration with far smaller, shorter detention systems.

The people targeted by ICE enforcement are not security threats. They are overwhelmingly workers, students, and family members. ICE's own data shows the large majority of people arrested have no criminal conviction, or only minor traffic offenses. Mass deportation operations in 2025 have targeted communities, workplaces, churches, and even homes with pre-dawn raids designed to terrorize.

The billionaire class has a specific stake in this: private detention is an investment opportunity. Labor deunionization is easier when workers are afraid of deportation. And political hysteria about immigration is the most reliable tool for splitting the working class and redirecting anger away from the people actually stealing from them.