Miller's private prisons will need to be filled with not just the undocumented but the denaturalized and newly stateless [View all]

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ice-deportation-detention-centers-rcna216482

How ICE’s massive cash infusion is poised to transform America
Republicans gave $45 billion to help ICE detain hundreds of thousands of immigrants — and another $100 billion to further supercharge Trump’s mass deportations.
July 7, 2025, 5:00 AM CDT
By Hayes Brown, MSNBC Opinion Writer/Editor

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Republicans gave [Stephen] Miller the tools he wants when they passed their budget reconciliation bill Thursday. The two largest buckets of funding in the act provide $45 billion each toward building Trump’s border wall and vastly expanding America’s immigration detention capacity. By comparison, that’s more than 13 times the current annual ICE budget for detention ($3.4 billion) and more than five times the entire annual budget of the Federal Bureau of Prisons ($8.6 billion).

Once this new funding hits ICE’s accounts, it will likely be spent as quickly as possible — with little oversight for how it’s doled out. The New York Times reported in April that ICE has already asked contractors for “proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services worth as much as $45 billion over the next two years.” Much of that money will go toward private companies contracted to build and run these facilities, some of which have been major political backers for Trump and the GOP.

Indeed, the keenest horror is that there’s now such a clear financial incentive to be in the deportation business. Catching and deporting migrants is set to be a growth industry, and the urge to see a return on the investment will help keep the machine moving. The current private prison pipeline will pale in comparison to the churn that will be needed to keep these camps filled with not just the undocumented, but the denaturalized and newly stateless, victims of the administration’s efforts to deny birthright citizenship and strip their political enemies of their rights. It will be the job of the newly hired ICE agents to find the people to transform into numbers on their monthly quota report.

Already investors can see that the potential fiscal returns for exploiting human suffering are higher than they’ve been in over 150 years. As of last month, according to The Associated Press, “CoreCivic’s stock has risen in price by 56% and Geo’s by 73%” since Trump’s win last year. Those numbers are only likely to increase as a flood of cash comes gushing into the gulf between morality and maximized profits.

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