Jonathan P. Baird

This is the first of a two part article about the deportation-industrial complex. This part outlines the components of the complex. Part two will look at the ideology behind it.

Back in 1961 as he prepared to leave office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered his famous farewell address warning of the dangers of the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower saw a danger in the alliance between the military establishment and defense contractors. He believed, wisely as it turned out, that excessive military spending promoted war, threatened democracy and individual liberties.

Now, as we head into 2026, we face the risk of a new menace: the creation of a deportation-industrial complex. The Trump regime is engineering the birth of a vast new system involving government agencies, private contractors, and financial interests that profit from mass detentions, mass surveillance and mass deportations.

It is a network designed to lock up thousands without due process while making money off their misery. Many caught in the jaws of this system will have committed no crime and have tried to follow immigration rules and legalize their status. The desire for maximizing profit drives increasing mass incarcerations and mass deportations. They need bodies to make money. Any sense of justice is irrelevant to ICE. They are trying to meet quotas set by Stephen Miller.

Our new danger is the alliance of ICE and private prison companies. Public policy is reduced to greed intertwined with lawlessness and racism. ICE moves detainees around like pieces on a chessboard. Access to counsel is not factored in as a consideration. People disappear into their system and become unreachable. It is no accident that the major criteria for rounding people up is that they have a brown skin and are Latino.

Congress made this possible when it passed Trump’s budget bill. It created the material underpinnings so this massive expansion project could go forward. Congress more than tripled ICE’s annual budget, making it the largest federal law enforcement agency with more than $170 billion allocated over four years for border and interior enforcement. The stated goal is to deport one million immigrants each year.

ICE received $45 billion to build more detention camps to house adults and children. It received $30 billion more for arrests and deportations. The plan is to add 10,000 more ICE detention officers and 50,000 more detention beds. As of late 2025, ICE holds 68,400 people in detention.

ICE contracts with private companies that build and run detention centers. The two largest companies are GEO Group and CoreCivic, two private prison companies. 80% of detained immigrants are being held by privately-run prisons. ICE pays these companies $165 a day for each prisoner held in detention. More arrests means more money for these companies. ICE currently has 180 detention facilities. Many are concentrated in Louisiana and Texas.

Whether the creation of this gulag is a good idea and serves the national interest is not up for discussion. That train already left the station.

On December 24, the Washington Post reported on ICE’s current efforts. They plan to renovate industrial warehouses to hold 80,000 immigrant detainees. Their plan is to greatly increase detentions and to speed up deportations. It is the Stephen Miller white nationalist fantasy put into operation.

ICE is creating a feeder system. Detainees will be booked into processing sites for a few weeks before being funneled into one of seven larger scale warehouses. Each warehouse will hold 5,000-10,000 people. ICE has 16 smaller warehouses. The larger warehouses will be ;located in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Mississippi. They are a staging ground for deportation.

The ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons said that their goal is to deport immigrants as efficiently as Amazon moves packages. To quote Lyons: “Like Prime, but with human beings”.

The private prison companies also plan to cash in by doing more than filling beds. Once they maximize detention capacity they plan to use electronic monitoring devices to expand digital surveillance. ICE is hiring private contractors to track and locate immigrants in a model akin to bounty hunting. Once the contractors locate immigrants and provide addresses, federal agents arrest. The private prison companies complete the process by providing ground and air transport.

There have been many lawsuits filed against the private prison companies for inhumane conditions including inadequate medical care, overcrowding, physical abuse, forced labor, freezing cell conditions and unsanitary facilities. In August, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider a lower court ruling that held state minimum wage laws applied to all private employers. GEO Group had been paying immigrant detainees $1 a day rather than the state minimum wage for jobs like kitchen and janitorial work. The Court said no.

The Trump regime has sought to reduce oversight of detention facilities. They eliminated the Office of Immigration Ombudsman and the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Previously these offices had been watchdogs. They also have often been denying Congress access to detention facilities when Congresspeople seek to see for themselves what the conditions are. Over 30 people have died in ICE facilities. Rep. LaMonica McIver was arrested and charged with assault when she tried to visit an ICE facility in New Jersey.

There is a revolving door between ICE and the private prison companies. This is parallel to the relationship between the military and defense contractors in the military-industrial complex. People slide back and forth drawing huge salaries when they move from ICE to the private side. It is a blood money pipeline that engenders self-perpetuation.

Americans need to consider whether this racist monstrosity is what they want to continue. It follows the sadistic and cruel concentration camp model pioneered over 80 years ago. Whatever happened to the Emma Lazarus tradition inscribed in the Statue of Liberty welcoming immigrants?