The companies that secretly run the federal government’s immigration detention and deportation system are banking on the potential for huge paychecks if Donald Trump returns to the White House.
President Trump has promised “mass deportations” to round up, detain and deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, but the U.S. Immigration Council says the effort will include: It could take 10 years and cost nearly $1 trillion.
The federal government already relies on a complex network of for-profit companies to enforce immigration enforcement. Experts say these private partnerships need to be expanded to meet growing demand.
“A mass deportation program also requires a mass detention program,” said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst at the National Immigrant Justice Center. It will be done,” he said. ”
The template is already on the border.
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The Department of Homeland Security has more than a decade of experience using private contractors to set up outdoor detention facilities for recent immigrants. The Department of Health and Human Services has set up similar “tent cities” to temporarily house unaccompanied migrant children. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of DHS, uses contractors for nearly every step of the immigration enforcement process, from transportation to detention to deportation.
Linda Corchado, an El Paso, Texas-based immigration attorney who represented immigrants detained during the Trump administration, said, “There’s a massive deportation machine going on in the interior that (DHS) isn’t doing enough. It’s a strategy that can be implemented in the future.”
Reliance on the private sector has allowed both Democratic and Republican administrations to quickly expand detention and deportation capacity, but government watchdogs say the contract is fraught with overspending and oversight. It states that there may be drawbacks such as lack of In the past, auditors have found deficiencies and, in some cases, substandard conditions in detention and shelter facilities run by contractors.
A spokesperson for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said in an email that the agency conducts “multilayered oversight” of contractors “to ensure that noncitizens are treated humanely.”
HHS did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
There is a risk that private contractors will become “more about profits and less about care,” said Vicki Gaubeka, associate director for U.S. immigration and border policy at Human Rights Watch. “They will try to cut corners wherever possible.”
Immigration control is “big business”
Experts told USA TODAY that companies with federal contracts for security, transportation, detention, deportation and other services worth millions or billions of dollars stand to gain the most from expanded immigration enforcement. He said it was highly likely.
Participants include publicly traded jail operators such as GEO Group and CoreCivic. Privately held companies such as MVM, which shuttle migrants between detention centers. There are also charter airlines, such as CSI Aviation Services, that supply planes to transport migrants to their home countries.
Despite the Biden-Harris administration ending the practice of using private contractors to operate federal prisons, DHS continues to contract with the same companies for immigrant detention, including GEO Group and CoreCivic. was.
GEO Group executives said in a recent quarterly earnings call with investors that the company is concerned about the possibility of a Trump presidency and the possibility of increasing payments to the 17 detention centers that contract with ICE. He indicated that he was on standby in preparation for a change in policy. These federal contracts are worth approximately $1 billion annually.
“We have a total of 10,000 beds in several idle secure services facilities that support ICE’s mission,” said James Black, director of secure services at GEO, which contracts with ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service. I think we are well suited to support them.” phone.
Another GEO executive told analysts that the company has no ability to expand the security services it provides to CSI Aviation, one of ICE’s top aviation contractors, if the Trump administration demands a rapid increase in deportation flights. He said there is.
Representatives for GEO Group did not respond to requests for comment.
CoreCivic representatives recently told investors that Election Day will be a watershed moment for their business, which relies on federal contracts.
CoreCivic executives told analysts on an earnings call that the company’s South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley will be closed during a 90-day grace period that extends past Election Day. spoke. The detention center housed women and children until the Biden-Harris administration canceled a $150 million contract with CoreCivic in June.
“We’re keeping all options open,” President and CEO Damon Hininger said.
An ICE spokesperson said immigrant detention is “nonpunitive” and that ICE only detains noncitizens when required by law.
The detention contract provides flexibility and the opportunity to “procure beds at a discounted rate”, “thereby saving taxpayers money”, the spokesperson said.
Former Trump administration officials say mass deportations will require support from the U.S. military, local governments and private contractors to increase capacity.
“It’s going to require an initial stockpile by either a private contractor or a county jail,” said Mark Morgan, who served as acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner in the Trump administration. “That applies to family residential centers. They need to be brought back.”
CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin said the company plays a “valuable but limited role” in the U.S. immigration system and has worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations.
“It is up to the discretion of our government partners to decide when, where and how they want to work with us,” he said.
Congress currently funds ICE to detain 41,500 people each day. At its peak during the Trump administration, the number of beds funded per day reached about 55,000.
The American Immigration Council estimates that to deport 1 million people a year, ICE would need to increase its detention capacity by 24 times.
“This is big business,” said Gaubeka of Human Rights Watch.
Contracts to care for and monitor teens and children
One of the Biden-Harris administration’s largest immigration contractors is Mobile, Alabama-based Rapid Deployment, which has a contract to house unaccompanied migrant children at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, in 2021. obtained. The company installed the largest of more than a dozen unlicensed “emergency” shelters for HHS, a contract that would ultimately be valued at $4.8 billion.
Despite allegations by a federal whistleblower of poor case management and poor conditions for children, the company raised $3.5 billion before the facility closed in 2023, according to the Federal Data Procurement System. . An audit by the Department of Health’s Office of Inspector General found deficiencies in child case management and “chilling of whistleblowers” at the Fort Bliss facility, but the report did not address the rapid development.
Rapid Deployment CEO Bruce Wagner did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The company’s attorney referred USA TODAY to HHS, which did not respond.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) accused HHS’s unaccompanied child program of a “lack of transparency” and “allowing contractors to hide in the shadows.”
“Private contractors receive billions of taxpayer dollars to help the federal government care for unaccompanied minors and match them with sponsors, but their activities are largely shrouded in secrecy. Grassley told USA TODAY in an emailed statement.
Companies also face public backlash over government contracts. A company that operated an “influx” shelter for unaccompanied minors during the Trump administration has canceled plans for an initial public offering and changed its name after public backlash.
In 2019, Caliburn International faced allegations that thousands of children were being subjected to long-term detention and “prison-like” rules at a shelter run by its subsidiary in Homestead, Florida. At the time, federal shelters were the only facilities for immigrant children run by for-profit companies, and immigration advocates persistently targeted them.
Rebranded Acuity International has been awarded a five-year contract worth $72 million with ICE in 2022. The Biden-Harris administration quietly ended the youth monitoring program earlier this year and terminated the contract in August.
Acuity International did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
A one-way ticket means a lot of money
At the end of the deportation process, detained migrants are marched down the stairs in shackles and loaded onto jets bound for their home countries.
These one-way tickets on ICE Air have become a big source of revenue for federal contractors like Classic Air Charter, a small Florida-based charter broker that won nearly $800 million in contracts from ICE last year. There is.
Representatives for the company, including owner Dan Carson, did not respond to inquiries from USA TODAY.
The Biden administration plans to record 1,600 deportation flights this year, all of them chartered flights, according to Witness at the Border, a nonprofit watchdog group that tracks deportation flights daily.
With President Trump’s goal of deporting millions of people, a second administration will likely need to significantly increase the number of flights.
“ICE doesn’t actually have any planes of its own,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “Removal operations rely on private transportation, a service that is not easy to scale up quickly.”
Classic Air Charter is the subject of an oversight investigation by the Center for Human Rights and the University of Washington. The group uses flight data to track trips made by Classic Air and competitor CSI Aviation.
ICE pays more than $8,500 per flight hour for the 737s it charters. The brokers work with major subcontractors Swift Airlines and World Atlantic Airlines, and the Human Rights Center has found that these airlines frequently switch from deporting immigrants to transporting VIPs, rock stars and college sports teams. I discovered that there is.
The center’s director, Angelina Godoy, said landline carriers and subcontractors are trying to hide their relationships with airline brokers, which could be bad news for both immigrants and U.S. taxpayers. said.
“Whenever there is government secrecy, abuses are rampant and there is no transparency about the conditions of these migrants,” Godoy said. “The lack of transparency with which our tax dollars are spent and the level of secrecy surrounding deportations is alarming.”
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