TEXAS — Documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Thursday reveal that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is exploring ways to increase its detention capacity in eight states: California, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and Washington.
“These records only further confirm ICE’s work to expand immigration detention across the country, including in facilities with clear records of abuse, and in areas where immigration detention has not previously existed,” said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “Expansion of detention will only enable ICE to enact President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation.”
These records were discovered from an ongoing ACLU FOIA lawsuit, filed in September 2024.
The ACLU reports that GEO Group, CoreCivic, MTC and Target Hospitality bid to expand ICE detention facilities.
Private prison corporations profit massively from ICE detention contracts, forming the core of the federal government’s immigration detention system for the last two decades.
These findings suggest ICE may be preparing for increased detention capacity under President-elect Trump’s planned mass deportations.
With 11 million undocumented immigrants and only 42,000 ICE detention beds, mass deportation would require expanding capacity, potentially using private prisons.
An executive order from President Biden in January 2021 instructed ICE to halt the use of private prisons for immigration detention and terminate its contracts with them.
Since January 2021, the ACLU states that increases in ICE immigrant detentions correlate with increases in private prison company revenues.