The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump's promised mass deportation plan, two sources familiar with the planning told NBC News.
The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.S., the sources said.
The plan would also include restarting the policy of detaining parents with their children, known as family detention, which immigration advocates have criticized and the Biden administration stopped in 2021, the sources said.
So far, people working on the plans with the Trump transition team are assessing which of the facilities the Biden administration closed could be reopened, taking account of available space in county jails and assessing which areas might need temporary facilities to detain migrants as part of the deportation effort.
Trump’s transition team is looking at how many migrants each region can hold, including in Democratic-controlled metropolitan areas across the country. A source familiar with the plans said they prioritize areas with large migrant populations that lack detention facilities, rather than single out Democratic strongholds.
Cities with large populations of migrants — like Denver, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago — could need additional detention sites built nearby to hold migrants arrested there. The administration might also need to reopen, expand or build new facilities in the Northeast to hold migrants arrested around New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, the source said.
Another source familiar with the plans said so-called sanctuary policies in Democratic cities should not prevent ICE from expanding detention there.
The details of the plan open a window into what Trump has promised will be the “largest deportation operation in American history.” Critics of the plan have said he would lack the money, staffing, willingness from countries to take back migrants, flights and detention space to make it a reality.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the transition team, said in a statement: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”
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Two of the largest publicly-traded companies in that industry, GEO Group and CoreCivic, have experienced increases in their stock prices. GEO Group and CoreCivic are both publicly traded, and their stocks have increased 69% and 61% respectively since Trump’s election victory.
In an earnings call Thursday, GEO Group Executive Chairman George Zoley said the company "was built for this unique moment in our company’s — country’s history and the opportunity that it will bring."
Brian Evans, GEO Group’s chief executive officer, said on the call, “We’re looking at a theoretical potential doubling of all of our services.”
On CoreCivic’s recent earnings call, CEO Damon Hininger noted that the company already has additional vacant beds in its system that could be used to meet a postelection demand.
“So we are taking proactive steps and working on a plan to activate and make available every single bed that we’ve got in the enterprise," Hininger said. "And again, that's about 18,000 beds."
