ICE is using no-bid contracts, boosting big firms, to get more detention
beds
[June 16, 2025]
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH and JOHN HANNA
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Leavenworth, Kansas, occupies a mythic space in
American crime, its name alone evoking a short hand for serving hard
time. The federal penitentiary housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine
Gun Kelly — in a building so storied that it inspired the term “the big
house.”
Now Kansas’ oldest city could soon be detaining far less famous people,
migrants swept up in President Donald Trump’s promise of mass
deportations of those living in the U.S. illegally.
The federal government has signed a deal with the private prison firm
CoreCivic Corp. to reopen a 1,033-bed prison in Leavenworth as part of a
surge of contracts U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued
without seeking competitive bids.
ICE has cited a “compelling urgency” for thousands more detention beds,
and its efforts have sent profit estimates soaring for politically
connected private companies, including CoreCivic, based in the
Nashville, Tennessee, area and another giant firm, the Geo Group Inc.,
headquartered in southern Florida.
That push faces resistance. Leavenworth filed a lawsuit against
CoreCivic after it tried to reopen without city officials signing off on
the deal, quoting a federal judge’s past description of the
now-shuttered prison as “a hell hole." The case in Leavenworth serves as
another test of the limits of the Republican president's unusually
aggressive tactics to force migrant removals.
To get more detention beds, the Trump administration has modified dozens
of existing agreements with contractors and used no-bid contracts. One
pays $73 million to a company led by former federal immigration
officials for “immigration enforcement support teams” to handle
administrative tasks, such as helping coordinate removals, triaging
complaints or telling ICE if someone is a risk to community safety.
Just last week , Geo Group announced that ICE modified a contract for an
existing detention center in southeastern Georgia so that the company
could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants —
and earn $66 million in annual revenue.
“Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and
demand for our services as we are seeing right now,” said CoreCivic CEO
Damon Hininger during an earnings call last month with shareholders.
A tax-cutting and budget reconciliation measure approved last month by
the House includes $45 billion over four years for immigrant detention,
a threefold spending increase. The Senate is now considering that
legislation.
Declaring an emergency to expedite contracts
When Trump started his second term in January, CoreCivic and Geo had
around 20 idle facilities, partly because of sentencing reforms that
reduced prison populations. But the Trump administration wants to more
than double the existing 41,000 beds for detaining migrants to at least
100,000 beds and — if private prison executives' predictions are
accurate — possibly to more than 150,000.
ICE declared a national emergency on the U.S. border with Mexico as part
of its justification for authorizing nine five-year contracts for a
combined 10,312 beds without “Full and Open Competition.”
Only three of the nine potential facilities were listed in ICE’s
document: Leavenworth, a 2,560-bed CoreCivic-owned facility in
California City, California, and an 1,800-bed Geo-owned prison in
Baldwin, Michigan.
The agreement for the Leavenworth facility hasn’t been released, nor
have documents for the other two sites. CoreCivic and Geo Group
officials said last month on earnings calls that ICE used what are known
as letter contracts, meant to speed things up when time is critical.
Charles Tiefer, a contract expert and professor emeritus of law at the
University of Baltimore Law School, said letter contracts normally are
reserved for minor matters, not the big changes he sees ICE making to
previous agreements.
“I think that a letter contract is a pathetic way to make big important
contracts,” he said.
A Kansas prison town becomes a priority
CoreCivic's Leavenworth facility quickly became a priority for ICE and
the company because of its central location. Leavenworth, with 37,000
residents, is only 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the west of the Kansas
City International Airport. The facility would hold men and women and is
within ICE’s area of operations for Chicago, 420 miles (676 kilometers)
to the northeast.
“That would mean that people targeted in the Chicago area and in
Illinois would end up going to this facility down in Kansas,” said Jesse
Franzblau, a senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice
Center.
Prisons have long been an important part of Leavenworth's economy,
employing hundreds of workers to guard prisoners held in two military
facilities, the nation’s first federal penitentiary, a Kansas
correctional facility and a county jail within 6 miles (10 kilometers)
of city hall.
Resistance from Trump country
The Leavenworth area's politics might have been expected to help
CoreCivic. Trump carried its county by more than 20 percentage points in
each of his three campaigns for president.
But skeptical city officials argue that CoreCivic needs a special use
permit to reopen its facility. CoreCivic disagrees, saying that it
doesn't because it never abandoned the facility and that the permitting
process would take too long. Leavenworth sued the company to force it to
get one, and a state-court judge last week issued an order requiring it.
An attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said the legal fight indicates how
much ill will CoreCivic generated when it held criminal suspects there
for trials in federal court for the U.S. Marshals Service.
In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees in its
Leavenworth facility after then-President Joe Biden, a Democrat, called
on the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the use of private prisons. In
the months before the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and
federal public defenders detailed stabbings, suicides, a homicide and
inmate rights violations in a letter to the White House. CoreCivic
responded at the time that the claims were “false and defamatory.”
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A judge has halted CoreCivic, on Wednesday, June 4, 2025, from
housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered
facility that the private prison operator now calls the Midwest
Regional Reception Center, in Leavenworth, Kan., pictured Monday,
March 3, 2025, unless it can get a permit from frustrated city
officials. (AP Photo/Nick Ingram)
Vacancies among correctional officers were as high as 23%, according
to a Department of Justice report from 2017.
“It was just mayhem,” recalled William Rogers, who worked as a guard
at the CoreCivic facility in Leavenworth from 2016 through 2020. He
said repeated assaults sent him to the emergency room three times,
including once after a blow to the head that required 14 staples.
The critics have included a federal judge
When Leavenworth sued CoreCivic, it opened its lawsuit with a quote
from U.S. District Court Judge Julie Robinson — an appointee of
President George W. Bush, a Republican — who said of the prison:
“The only way I could describe it frankly, what’s going on at
CoreCivic right now is it’s an absolute hell hole.”
The city’s lawsuit described detainees locked in showers as
punishment. It said that sheets and towels from the facility clogged
up the wastewater system and that CoreCivic impeded the city police
force’s ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent
crimes.
The facility had no inmates when CoreCivic gave reporters a tour
earlier this year, and it looked scrubbed top to bottom and the
smell of disinfectant hung in the air. One unit for inmates had a
painting on one wall featuring a covered wagon.
During the tour, when asked about the allegations of past problems,
Misty Mackey, a longtime CoreCivic employee who was tapped to serve
as warden there, apologized for past employees' experiences and said
the company officials “do our best to make sure that we learn from
different situations.”
ICE moves quickly across the U.S.
Besides CoreCivic’s Leavenworth prison, other once-shuttered
facilities could come online near major immigrant population
centers, from New York to Los Angeles, to help Trump fulfill his
deportation plans.
ICE wants to reopen existing facilities because it’s faster than
building new ones, said Marcela Hernandez, the organizing director
for the Detention Watch Network, which has organized nationwide
protests against ICE detention.
Counties often lease out jail space for immigrant detention, but ICE
said some jurisdictions have passed ordinances barring that.
ICE has used contract modifications to reopen shuttered lockups like
the 1,000-bed Delaney Hall Facility in Newark, New Jersey, and a
2,500-bed facility in Dilley, Texas, offering no explanations why
new, competitively bid contracts weren't sought.
The Newark facility, with its own history of problems, resumed
intakes May 1, and disorder broke out at the facility Thursday
night. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, a Democrat who previously was
arrested there and accused of trespassing, cited reports of a
possible uprising, and the Department of Homeland Security confirmed
four escapes.
The contract modification for Dilley, which was built to hold
families and resumed operations in March, calls its units
“neighborhoods” and gives them names like Brown Bear and Blue
Butterfly.
The financial details for the Newark and Dilley contract
modifications are blacked out in online copies, as they for more
than 50 other agreements ICE has signed since Trump took office. ICE
didn't respond to a request for comment.
From idle prisons to a ‘gold rush’
Private prison executives are forecasting hundreds of millions of
dollars in new ICE profits. Since Trump’s reelection in November,
CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%.
“It’s the gold rush,” Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal
justice at the University of North Florida who studies private
prisons. “All of a sudden, demand is spiraling. And when you’re the
only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your
terms.”
Geo's former lobbyist Pam Bondi is now the U.S. attorney general. It
anticipates that all of its idle prisons will be activated this
year, its executive chairman, George Zoley, told shareholders.
CoreCivic, which along with Geo donated millions of dollars to
largely GOP candidates at all levels of government and national
political groups, is equally optimistic. It began daily talks with
the Trump administration immediately after the election in November,
said Hininger.
CoreCivic officials said ICE's letter contracts provide initial
funding to begin reopening facilities while the company negotiates a
longer-term deal. The Leavenworth deal is worth $4.2 million a month
to the company, it disclosed in a court filing.
Tiefer, who served on an independent commission established to study
government contracting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, said ICE
is "placing a very dicey long-term bet” because of its past problems
and said ICE is giving CoreCivic “the keys to the treasury” without
competition.
But financial analysts on company earnings calls have been
delighted. When CoreCivic announced its letter contracts, Joe Gomes,
of the financial services firm Noble Capital Markets, responded
with, “Great news."
“Are you hiding any more of them on us?” he asked.
___
Hanna reported from Topeka, Kan. Associated Press writers Joshua
Goodman in Miami and Morgan Lee, in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed
reporting.
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