From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement

Abstract

The United States runs the largest immigrant detention system in the world, and it relies on private companies to do so. This visualization considers how private prison companies have made immigrant detention a central part of their business. I compile and report 20 years of revenues for the two dominant private prison firms in the United States. The revenues are disaggregated by customer and presented as proportional stacked area graphs, which show changes in the composition of companies’ revenues. The graphs reveal that revenues from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have increased, respectively, fourfold and sevenfold for CoreCivic and The GEO Group, and they now account for 30 percent and 43 percent, respectively, of corporate revenues. These firms’ growing reliance on ICE revenue coupled with ICE’s reliance on private contractors raises questions about democracy, governance, and punishment.

The United States has the largest immigrant detention system in the world (Kassie 2019). Today, more than 36,000 immigrants are detained under the jurisdiction of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the federal agency responsible for enforcing immigration law within the United States (TRAC Immigration 2024). The U.S. government relies on private companies to detain most of these people. In recent years, roughly two-thirds of ICE detainees have been held in facilities operated by private firms (Homeland Security Advisory Council 2016; Ryo and Peacock 2018; TRAC 2018). As the U.S. government has become reliant on private companies to detain immigrants, so too have private companies become reliant on the U.S. government to supply immigrant detainees. This visualization documents how the two largest private prison firms have made immigrant detention a central part of their business.

CoreCivic and the The GEO Group have dominated the private prison industry for years. Founded in the early 1980s to satisfy the United States’s growing demand for prisons, these firms, and a handful of others, held more than 130,000 prisoners at their peak in the early 2010s (Budd 2024; Carson 2014). But as prison populations began to shrink, these companies repurposed their prison facilities to hold noncriminal immigrants in the civil immigration system (Ackerman and Furman 2013; Romero 2023). CoreCivic and GEO now hold half of all ICE detainees (TRAC 2020).

This visualization presents revenue for CoreCivic and GEO as proportional stacked area graphs (Figure 1), which depict the share of total revenue derived from each of four customers: U.S. ICE, U.S. Bureau of Prisons (or BOP, which primarily holds people convicted of federal crimes), U.S. Marshals Service (or USMS, which holds people awaiting trial or sentencing in federal courts), and all other nonfederal authorities (which includes state, local, and international customers). Together, these customer categories constitute 100 percent of the firms’ total revenues. Revenue data come from annual reports (10-K reports) submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I present data going back to 2002 and 2003, when CoreCivic and GEO, respectively, began to disaggregate data by customer.

Figure 1.

Private prison company revenue by customer type, 2002–2003 to 2023.

The graphs for both companies in Figure 1 reveal the increased reliance on the federal government for revenue. In 2002, federal contracts (BOP + ICE + USMS) accounted for less than a third of CoreCivic’s revenue; in recent years, they accounted for more than half. For GEO, federal contracts rose from one-quarter of corporate revenues in 2003 to nearly two-thirds in 2023. Much of the growth in federal revenue comes from immigrant detention. Both companies saw substantial growth in ICE revenue, which now accounts for 30 percent and 43 percent of revenues for CoreCivic and GEO, respectively. In the last 20 years, ICE revenue quadrupled for CoreCivic (7 percent to 30 percent) and grew sevenfold for GEO (6 percent to 43 percent). Growing ICE revenue was partially offset by shrinking BOP revenue. In 2023, CoreCivic ended its one remaining contract with BOP, and GEO generated only 3 percent of revenue from BOP. The final itemized customer, USMS, has been a substantial and growing source of revenue for both companies. Between 2002 (or 2003) and 2023, USMS revenue grew from 11 percent to 21 percent for CoreCivic, and it grew from 9 percent to 17 percent for GEO. Notably, the proportional growth in ICE (and USMS) revenue has occurred during a period of growth for the companies. CoreCivic’s total revenues doubled in this period, going from $0.96 billion to $1.9 billion, and GEO’s total revenues nearly quadrupled, going from $0.62 billion to $2.41 billion.

The expansion of private industry into immigrant detention is important for several reasons. First, it is at odds with the preferences of U.S. residents, a majority of whom do not want private companies to detain immigrants (Enns and Ramirez 2018; Ryo and Peacock 2022). Second, it amplifies the relevance of research documenting problems in private detention centers (Patler and Branic 2017; Ryo and Peacock 2018). Third, it augurs increased corporate lobbying and campaign contributions to advance policies and politicians that will support restrictive controls on immigrants (Collingwood, Morin, and El-Khatib 2018; Morín, Torres, and Collingwood 2021). Finally, it illustrates the blurring of civil immigration law and criminal law in a form of “crimmigration” (Menjívar, Gómez Cervantes, and Alvord 2018). In sum, this visualization captures one manifestation of the growing symbiosis between U.S. immigration law and the private prison industry. Researchers, policymakers, and advocates should continue to explore this interrelationship and its implications for democracy, governance, and punishment.

Supplemental Material

sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 – Supplemental material for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement

Supplemental material, sj-docx-1-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement by Brett C. Burkhardt in Socius

Supplemental Material

sj-txt-2-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 – Supplemental material for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement

Supplemental material, sj-txt-2-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement by Brett C. Burkhardt in Socius

Research Data

sj-txt-3-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 – Supplemental material for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement

Supplemental material, sj-txt-3-srd-10.1177_23780231241277106 for From Private Prisons to Private Detention: Visualizing the Business of Immigration Enforcement by Brett C. Burkhardt in Socius

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).