America's private prison complex gears up for Trump deportation bonanza

Private prisons and other companies that provide detention services are getting ready to cash in on what President-elect Donald Trump has billed as "the largest domestic deportation operation in American history." That includes scouring for as many detention beds as possible in their networks of facilities, and scouting sites for new buildings to house migrants.

- Elizabeth Findell, Tawnell D. Hobbs and Tarini Parti

Identifying, locating, arresting, detaining, adjudicating and transporting potentially millions of men, women, and children. The actual scope of Trump's plans remains unclear. He repeatedly promised mass deportations during his first term in office. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported about 935,000 people who had been living in the U.S. illegally under his administration, according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute—fewer than Obama. The Biden administration, which deported relatively few people in its first year, deported more than 271,000 in fiscal year 2024—a 10-year record—according to newly released figures from ICE. The administration deported some 545,000 over its four years.

Trump and his advisers have said in recent weeks that they intend to focus initially on migrants who crossed the border illegally and have a criminal background, causing some allies to worry that Trump may water down his plans. Tom Homan, who was chosen by Trump to run the deportation effort, told CNN recently that ICE will need enough beds to detain a minimum of 100,000 migrants. The agency currently has funding to maintain 41,500 beds.

The American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, has estimated that deporting one million people in one year would cost $88 billion, a figure that includes expenses associated with arrest, detention, legal processing and removal. There were an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the U.S. as of 2022.

GEO, which currently houses about 40% of ICE detainees, is looking at a potential doubling of all its services, Zoley said on the call.