Who’s cashing in on Trump’s immigration crackdown? It’s not the American people nor the federal or state governments
For many workers or organizations reliant on the federal government, President Donald Trump’s return to office has meant jobs, funding and entire agencies slashed, as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims to have cut $202 billion.
But one industry has seen exponential growth — and expects even more to come: immigration detention.
“Private prison companies have been so giddy since last November, about the prospect of making billions of dollars at the expense of every American,” Stacy Suh, director at Detention Watch Network, told The Independent.
And the companies made sure to help Trump get elected.
America’s two leading detention companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic, were among the Trump campaign’s most notable donors last year, with executives and subsidiaries donating a total of $2.7 million to the president’s campaign and associated political action committees.
CoreCivic even bestowed over $500,000 towards Trump’s inauguration this year, while Geo Group contributed to his 2016 inauguration fund.
Trump’s Big, Beautiful, Bill set aside an unprecedented $45 billion for ICE to boost immigration detention. As the two largest detention powerhouses in the U.S., both Geo Group and CoreCivic stand to win big.
As soon as Trump won the election last November, CoreCivic’s share price saw a huge spike, nearly doubling from $13.63 per share to $22.13 per share in just one week.
GeoGroup’s share price jumped from $15.13 to $25.05 in the same post-election period.
This is likely because the privately-run facilities house 86 percent of the detained immigrant population, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
Yet just 6 percent of Americans believe that ICE detention centers should be run privately, an exclusive poll for The Independent can reveal, with the majority saying facilities should be run by federal or state governments, according to Prolific.
Over 60,000 people are currently held in immigration detention across the U.S., according to ICE records seen by The New York Times.
That number has already jumped by 54 percent since Trump’s return, with average detention populations under the Biden administration around 39,000, according to TRAC.
But though the government may determine their future, the 20 largest ICE detention centers are all operated by private companies, according to TRAC’s data in January.
