LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Private prison operators are marketing their shuttered lockups to federal immigration officials as President Donald Trump pushes for mass deportations, with some facilities nabbing lucrative no-bid contracts.
When Trump, a Republican, took office, politically connected private-prison giants CoreCivic Inc. and The Geo Group Inc. had around 20 idle facilities, partially the result of sentencing reforms that reduced prison populations.
But the push to reopen them has been met with resistance in unexpected places like Leavenworth, Kansas, a town whose name alone evokes a short hand for serving hard time. The Leavenworth facility was mothballed in late 2021 after then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, called on the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the use of private prisons.
Here’s a look at some of the takeaways from an Associated Press report about private prisons in the era of mass deportations.
Demand for bed spurs interest in private prison
The Trump administration wants to increase its budgeted capacity of about 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least 100,000 beds and maybe — if private prison executives’ predictions are accurate — more than 150,000.
That has a gallery of shuttered facilities — some with a history of issues — coming online near major immigrant population centers, from New York to Los Angeles, where Trump hopes to detain and deport millions of people.
With Congress weighing massive spending increases for deportations, the companies’ stock and profit estimates have soared.
Deals inked as contract modifications or without bids
Just last week, Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants.
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