On the first day of his second presidency, Donald Trump reversed former President Joe Biden’s executive order on private prisons.
Biden’s order had barred contracts between the Department of Justice and private detention centers. When Biden issued the order, in 2021, only about 14,000 federal prisoners were in private facilities, a fraction of the nearly 152,000 federal prisoners, according to the Associated Press.
The Bureau of Prisons offered scant information about Trump’s order, or whether it would pursue new contracts. In a written statement, officials wrote that the bureau “supports and will comply with all executive orders issued by the President of the United States. Beyond this, we have no further information to provide.”
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the Justice Program at progressive think tank Brennan Center for Justice, said because many federal facilities are facing deteriorating infrastructure and insufficient funds to fix buildings, a small portion of the population may be moved to private facilities.
Specific groups may be more likely to be kept in private detention than others.
“Traditionally the population that was held in custody by for-profit firms tended to be those convicted of federal crimes who are undocumented,” said Eisen, author of a book about private prisons and mass incarceration. She said that is because undocumented prisoners, many of whom will be deported after their incarceration, don’t get as much programming or services.
People being detained by the U.S. Marshals Service before their trials may also be more likely to be held in private facilities, because they need to be near courthouses where there may not be federal jails.
Trump’s nominee for attorney general, Pam Bondi, lobbied in 2019 for a major private prison company, the Geo Group, among other clients. In a recent earnings call, the Geo Group indicated it was already anticipating a potential increase in government business.
Private prison stocks have soared since Trump won the election. But Bureau of Prison contracts are unlikely to be the biggest driver of profits for these companies. According to the Brennan Center, prison companies’ most significant contracts are with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. For example, in 2023, 43% of Geo Group’s revenue came from ICE. Considering Trump’s promise to expand immigrant deportation and detention, that is a likely area to see growth.
Neither Biden’s order nor Trump’s reversal of that order affected existing or future ICE contracts.
