Table of Contents
The private prison industry saw its influence wane under Joe Biden, but it remains dominant in the business of immigration detention. So when President Donald Trump signed the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” on July 4, dedicating $45 billion to immigration detention with a goal to double or triple the population behind bars, it was a huge payoff.
The victory was in the works for years. A private prison company handed consulting and lobbying gigs to Trump’s allies, its political action committee was the first to max out its donation to Trump, and industry executives had already made plans to reopen shuttered prisons — laying the groundwork for what they promised investors would be an incarceration bonanza.
In the 2024 election cycle, employees and PACs affiliated with the publicly traded industry behemoths GEO Group and CoreCivic contributed overwhelmingly to Republicans and Trump.
Republicans received 92 percent of $3.7 million in contributions affiliated with GEO Group and 96 percent of the $785,000 in contributions affiliated with CoreCivic, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group that tracks official disclosures. When Trump won, the two companies gave $500,000 each to his inaugural committee.
“The private prison corporations were keenly aware of the implications of the then-Trump campaign’s platform for mass deportations.”
Even though the industry kept profiting from the Biden administration — despite a supposed ban on private prisons — one advocate said it was clear to her why companies went all-in on Trump.
“The private prison corporations were keenly aware of the implications of the then-Trump campaign’s platform for mass deportations,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “There is no doubt that these private prison companies were keenly aware of the potential profits to be made under such a scheme.”
Before the federal budget bill passed, private prison executives on earnings calls with investors were exultant about their upcoming business opportunities under the law — and held regular meetings with the Trump administration to pitch new plans on how to lock people up.
Now, the White House hopes to get the bill’s funding out the door quickly, in order to expand the middle part of a deportation pipeline that stretches from arrests at Home Depots to flights abroad.
In a statement, the White House rejected the idea that the budget bill or any of Trump’s immigration policies were shaped by industry.
“The only people who influence the President’s decision-making are the American people. But leave it to the Fake News Intercept to pathetically and desperately try to attack agenda that the American people voted for – deportations of criminal illegal aliens,” Abigail Jackson, an administration spokesperson, wrote in an email.
Prisons for Profit
Days after his inauguration in 2021, Biden made a splash by announcing that the federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, would no longer house incarcerated people in private prisons.
The supposed ban only affected a few thousand of the BOP’s roughly 150,000-person population, and the private prison companies soon managed to find workarounds.
More importantly, Biden’s order did not touch the much larger number of people held in immigration detention, which is reserved mostly for people accused of committing civil violations such as illegal presence in the U.S.
Three years into Biden’s administration, about 90 percent of people in immigration detention were housed in private facilities. There were about 40,000 people in immigration detention by the end of his term.
Many were detained in facilities owned or operated by CoreCivic and GEO Group. Both companies also have subsidiaries profiting off other parts of the immigration system, ranging from an electronic monitoring company GEO Group bought in 2010 to a transportation company owned by CoreCivic.
Cultivating Trump’s Camp
Although they continued doing business with the Biden administration, private prison companies bristled at his at his attitude toward the industry.
In addition to the millions in campaign cash the private prison industry funneled to Trump and Republicans, there were jobs for major figures in Trump’s orbit. Tom Homan, the former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had a consulting gig with GEO Group that was only made public this year. Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general, picked up work as a lobbyist for the company in 2019, shortly before she joined Trump’s defense team at his first impeachment. Trump in his second term tapped Homan to serve as “border czar” and Bondi as U.S. attorney general.
While many industries with government work try to cozy up to former officials, Lauren-Brooke Eisen, the senior director of the Brennan Center’s Justice Program and author of a book on the industry, said private prisons cultivated unusually close relationships.
“There’s sort of always a revolving door between the private sector and the government, but what we’re seeing here is, we’re also seeing people with super close ties,” she said.
In a statement, GEO Group did not directly address questions about the donations to the Trump campaign or its ties to high-ranking administration officials.
“We are proud of the role our company has played for 40 years to support the law enforcement mission of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,” a company spokesperson wrote. “Over the last four decades, our innovative support service solutions have helped the federal government implement the policies of seven different Presidential Administrations.”
CoreCivic, meanwhile, said that it welcomed “the opportunity to support any political leaders who are open to the solutions our company provides to serious national challenges, including providing safe, humane care for people going through the civil immigration process and helping those in our criminal justice system prepare to return to our communities with the skills they need to be successful.”
The donation to the inaugural committee, CoreCivic spokesperson Ryan Gustin said, “is consistent with our past practice of civic participation in and support for the inauguration process, including contributions to inauguration activities for both Democrats and Republicans.”
The White House rejected out of hand the idea that campaign contributions, or the work that top officials conducted for the industry while out of office, had anything to do with crafting the specifics of the budget bill.
“The One, Big, Beautiful bill provides the funding necessary to fulfill the President’s promise to carry out the largest mass deportation operation in history. CoreCivic and GEO Group have received contracts under both Democrat and Republican administrations,” Jackson wrote.
We’re independent of corporate interests — and powered by members. Join us.
Become a member
Join Our Newsletter
Thank You For Joining!
Original reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.
Will you take the next step to support our independent journalism by becoming a member of The Intercept?
Become a member
By signing up, I agree to receive emails from The Intercept and to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Drawing Up Plans
After Trump’s first term, Homan hung up a shingle for a consulting firm that told prospective clients it had a “track record of opening doors,” resulting in big state and federal contracts.
As border czar, Homan has said he will not be involved in making decisions about individual contracts. Bondi has promised to consult ethics officials if any conflicts of interest come up, and a Justice Department spokesperson said she “played no role in the provisions for additional funding for immigration detention.”
Such denials do not sway Cho, the ACLU lawyer whose work includes representing people in immigration detention.
“Whatever those responses are doesn’t belie the fact that these companies clearly are purchasing influence in order to benefit politically and financially,” she said.
Citing reporting from The Intercept, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in May called on Bondi to recuse herself from “any and all” activities tied to immigration detention that could directly or indirectly benefit GEO Group.
The administration has brushed off such critiques as it pushes ahead with its mass deportation plans. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, says the budget law will allow it to secure 80,000 new detention beds and bring its total population over 100,000.
GEO Group said in November that Trump’s plans could help it fill 18,000 empty beds, translating into $400 million in additional annual revenue. CoreCivic said in February that it had pitched the federal government on plans for housing an extra 28,000 people.
The companies will face competition from states like Florida, which is relying on federal reimbursements to build tent camps at places such as the so-called “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in the Everglades intended to house 3,000 people.
“The $45 billion represents such an unprecedented broadening for federal prison funding for immigration.”
Cho said she does not think such state facilities pose a business threat to the private prison companies, in large part because there is so much money to go around.
“Even state detention systems often depend on private prison companies for operation,” she said. “The $45 billion represents such an unprecedented broadening for federal prison funding for immigration.”
In recent weeks, the major private prison companies have continued to make announcements about their growing capacity – for detention and profit. CoreCivic announced last month that it had spent $67 million on a detention center in Virginia that it expects to produce an extra $40 million in annual revenue.
If Homan has his way, many of the new detention centers springing up to fill the administration’s demand will be under looser state regulations instead of more stringent federal standards.
“It is really scary that we are seeing a reduction of oversight, along with this idea that we should loosen the standards, with this huge increase in funding.”
Stories of suffering behind bars are already proliferating as the detention population grows. Eisen noted that one of the Trump administration’s first actions at the DHS was to decimate an oversight office meant to investigate allegations of wrongdoing.
“It is really scary that we are seeing a reduction of oversight, along with this idea that we should loosen the standards, with this huge increase in funding,” she said.
