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Just over four years ago on the campaign trail, Joe Biden made a bold pledge to voters that as president he would end the federal use of private prisons – facilities where inmates have long complained of abusive treatment.
But as he left office last month, his record on that matter fell short: While Biden ended the Bureau of Prison’s contracts with private prisons, he allowed their use by Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand.
Today, because of ICE detainees, the federal government has more people in private prisons than when Biden took office, according to data obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information request and provided to CNN.
And Biden’s choice to exempt ICE from his private prison policies did something more: It paved the way for President Donald Trump to quickly expand their use to hold undocumented immigrants.
Among the flurry of inauguration day executive orders Trump signed was one overturning Biden’s executive order on private prisons. But long before then, in the waning months of the Biden administration, ICE asked private-prison companies such as Geo Group and CoreCivic, among others, for proposals to expand private-prison capacity this year in at least seven states: California, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Texas and Washington. That move came despite ongoing allegations of poor conditions and improper treatment of detainees in many private prisons.
Shareholders in those companies expect a huge payday under Trump. Between Election Day in November and Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Geo Group shares rose 133% in price, while CoreCivic shares jumped nearly 60%, far outpacing the broader stock market.
In recent decades, the fortunes of private prison companies have tended to rise under Republican administrations and stall under Democrats.
In 2016, President Barack Obama ordered the Department of Justice to phase out and eventually end the use of private prisons, after an inspector general report found private prisons were more violent than publicly run facilities. Trump rescinded that order in his first term. In 2021, Biden again ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to stop contracting with private prisons, because of concerns similar to those behind Obama’s order five years earlier. Biden’s order also extended to the US Marshals Service, which mostly holds pre-trial detainees.
However, private prison companies effectively found ways to shift federal contracting to immigration detention.
Over Biden’s term, as the number of federal inmates in private prisons under Bureau of Prisons contracts fell to zero from more than 14,000, the number of immigrants detained in private prisons under ICE contracts rose by roughly 24,000, to more than 35,000. By the end of Biden’s term, private prisons held nearly 90 percent of immigrant detainees, nearly identical to the percent at the end of Trump’s first term. And overall, private prisons housed nearly 9,000 more federal detainees than at the start of Biden’s term.
That rise took place amid continuing charges of abuse and mistreatment in private facilities. Geo Group is currently fighting a lawsuit from current and former detainees alleging it exposed them to hazardous chemicals at a California detention center. Another Geo Group facility in Tacoma, Washington, has repeatedly faced detainee hunger strikes to protest alleged poor food and medical care, among other issues.
And the Department of Justice’s civil rights division is investigating a CoreCivic correctional facility in Tennessee over allegations that staffing shortages exposed inmates to violence and sexual assault. The fate of that case is unclear after the Justice Department recently ordered the division to freeze any ongoing litigation left over from the Biden administration.
Source and photo – CNN
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