At CoreCivic, immigration crackdowns are good for business

Revenue grew more than 27% for private prison operator CoreCivic as the Tennessee company profited from contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement that support the Trump administration’s mass detention and deportation agenda, according to a shareholders’ report released last week. 

Revenue from ICE, alone, increased more than 50% compared to the same three-month period last year as the company housed more immigrants and negotiated higher daily fees for detaining them at facilities across the country.  CoreCivic also contracts with states to operate prisons across the nation, including four in Tennessee.

CoreCivic’s profits are also linked to several lucrative real estate deals with the Department of Homeland Security to expand the federal government’s detention capacity. Since July the company has sold four lockups in California, Minnesota and Kansas to the federal government to house immigrant detainees. In total, it earned $2.2 billion from the sales. CoreCivic will continue to operate the same four detention facilities under new managment contracts with ICE. 

In last week’s earnings call, CEO Patrick Swindle expressed optimism about future deals with ICE. The company’s immigrant detainee population is on pace to rise – it has grown by nearly 18% since April. Swindle said the company is in negotiations to potentially sell more of its detention centers to the federal government. 

“The solutions we provide to our federal customers, including primarily ICE and the U.S Marshals Service continue to be a significant component of our business,” Swindle said. The company contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service to house federal prisoners.

CoreCivic is a longtime ICE contractor, but the size and scope of its contracts with federal immigration enforcement quickly ballooned after Congress last year approved of a $75 billion budget boost for ICE and a $64 billion increase for Customs and Border Patrol over the next four years. 

The Tennessee companies profiting from the Trump administration’s immigration agenda

The federal contracts are now responsible for more than half of the company’s overall revenue. 

The amped-up immigration detention and deportation policies of the Trump administration, which have controversially included detaining individuals with no criminal records in detention facilities far from home without access to bond hearings, has drawn condemnation from human rights groups.

“Private prison corporations have long profited off the harm and death of Black and brown bodies across the country,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

“Now, Trump’s mass detention and deportation machine is driving record profits into the pockets of billionaires while families are separated and Tennesseans struggle to put food on the table. Most Americans agree that the attacks on immigrants go too far,” she said.

Swindle, speaking on a public earning call last week, did not address those criticisms directly, but characterized the company’s detention operations as humane and efficient.

“We remain confident that the corrections and detention beds that we provide are the most humane, most efficient logistically, most compliant, most secure, readily available and provide the best value to the government,” Swindle told investors.

CoreCivic is not alone among Tennessee companies reaping windfalls from a federal immigration spending spree.

Tennessee companies have entered contracts to supply materials for a wall at the nation’s southern border, parkas for ICE agents, mylar blankets and underwear for immigrant detainees and tactical breaching equipment for ICE officers. 

With three months remaining until a new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, the total value of contracts between Tennessee companies and the federal immigration enforcement agencies is approaching $1.7 billion, a figure that does not include CoreCivic’s property transactions. In 2024, the total value of those contracts stood at $255 million, according to https://www.usaspending.gov/, a public repository of federal government contract information.