The private prison industry saw its influence wane under Joe Biden, but it remains dominant in the business of immigration detention. So when President Donald Trump signed the so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” on July 4, dedicating $45 billion to immigration detention with a goal to double or triple the population behind bars, it was a huge payoff.

The victory was in the works for years. A private prison company handed consulting and lobbying gigs to Trump’s allies, its political action committee was the first to max out its donation to Trump, and industry executives had already made plans to reopen shuttered prisons — laying the groundwork for what they promised investors would be an incarceration bonanza.

In the 2024 election cycle, employees and PACs affiliated with the publicly traded industry behemoths GEO Group and CoreCivic contributed overwhelmingly to Republicans and Trump.

Republicans received 92 percent of $3.7 million in contributions affiliated with GEO Group and 96 percent of the $785,000 in contributions affiliated with CoreCivic, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research group that tracks official disclosures. When Trump won, the two companies gave $500,000 each to his inaugural committee.

“The private prison corporations were keenly aware of the implications of the then-Trump campaign’s platform for mass deportations.”

Even though the industry kept profiting from the Biden administration — despite a supposed ban on private prisons — one advocate said it was clear to her why companies went all-in on Trump.

“The private prison corporations were keenly aware of the implications of the then-Trump campaign’s platform for mass deportations,” said Eunice Hyunhye Cho, a senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “There is no doubt that these private prison companies were keenly aware of the potential profits to be made under such a scheme.”

Before the federal budget bill passed, private prison executives on earnings calls with investors were exultant about their upcoming business opportunities under the law — and held regular meetings with the Trump administration to pitch new plans on how to lock people up.

Now, the White House hopes to get the bill’s funding out the door quickly, in order to expand the middle part of a deportation pipeline that stretches from arrests at Home Depots to........

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