“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand for our services as we are seeing right now.” That’s CoreCivic’s CEO, quoted in May, summing up what’s happening as Congress unleashes a historic $45 billion for immigrant detention—a figure that blows past the combined spending of the Obama, Biden, and first Trump administrations. The numbers alone are staggering, but the real story is what this tidal wave of funding means for people, politics, and the future of US immigration.
This isn’t just about locking up more people. The new bill triples detention funding, doubles bed capacity, and supercharges the role of private prison contractors, who now hold over 90 percent of ICE detainees—up from 81 percent under Trump. Companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic, both major political donors, are raking in billions from contracts that guarantee profits no matter how many beds are filled. The Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, Delaney Hall in New Jersey, and even the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” in Florida are just a few of the facilities expanding or reopening under these deals, many signed without competitive bidding thanks to what officials call “compelling urgency.”
But while the cash flows, so do the criticisms. Activists and rights groups are sounding alarms, with more than 100 organizations recently declaring, “Detention should not be about politics. It is about human lives, and its use has devastating consequences for the people who endure it.” The ACLU, Physicians for Human Rights, and Amnesty International have all documented systemic rights violations, medical neglect, and preventable deaths in detention. At the El Paso Service Processing Center, Amnesty International reported, “Immigrants, including asylum seekers and those who have lived in the U.S. for years, are being rounded up throughout the country, denied access to legal representation and due process, thrown into abusive detention facilities, and in some cases disappeared to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador.” Amnesty’s April 2025 visit found detainees facing unsanitary conditions, solitary confinement, and expired food—some reporting, “We do not get access to medical care as needed. They feed us expired food and we all got sick. They told us to drink water. The water is warm and not clean. It smells.”
This funding blitz isn’t happening in a vacuum. Alongside the $45 billion for detention, Congress has greenlit $46.5 billion for border wall construction and $6 billion for high-tech surveillance. The border now boasts 735 miles of fencing, drones, and 200 autonomous surveillance towers. Yet, as enforcement budgets soar, the immigration court system is left in the dust, receiving just $840 million—a mismatch that’s fueled a backlog of over 3.7 million cases and left many languishing in detention for years.
What’s driving this surge? Critics point to profit motives and political theater. Nearly 72 percent of people in ICE detention have no criminal record, and many with records are there for minor offenses like traffic violations. Still, the administration has justified the expansion with claims of public safety and deterrence, despite research showing immigrants actually commit crimes at lower rates than native-born Americans.
International watchdogs are weighing in, too. Amnesty International and the United Nations have flagged US detention practices as falling short of global human rights standards, especially as reports of family separation, lack of legal access, and targeting of vulnerable groups mount. The use of the Alien Enemies Act to detain and expel Venezuelans has drawn particular outrage, with stories of people labeled as gang-affiliated based solely on nationality or tattoos, and threatened with transfer to Guantanamo or El Salvador.
Meanwhile, oversight is slipping away. ICE has denied members of Congress access to facilities, eliminated key oversight offices, and implemented new policies requiring 72 hours’ notice for visits—moves that rights groups say undermine transparency and accountability.
As the debate rages, one thing is clear: the scale and speed of this detention blitz are unprecedented, and the consequences—financial, human, and political—are only beginning to unfold.
