On Feb. 13, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a memo outlining the “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” a plan to expand detention capacity from roughly 70,000 beds to 92,600 by the end of 2026. The document, obtained and posted publicly by New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, reveals a $38.5 billion project funded through the “One Big Beautiful Act.” It calls for acquiring and renovating eight large-scale detention facilities capable of holding 7,000 to 10,000 people each, along with 16 regional processing centers and 10 existing “turnkey” facilities.
ICE presents this as modernization. Efficiency. A necessary upgrade to streamline the “detention and removal process” and enhance custody operations. But the language reveals what I believe the project to be: an expansion of permanent deportation infrastructure.
The memo’s FAQ section confirms these sites will serve as “ICE’s long-term detention solution,” built for “sustained long-term operations.” Institutional design, if you will. This infrastructure is being built largely for people who pose no public safety threat.
According to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, TRAC, 73.6 percent of current ICE detainees have no criminal convictions. That is 50,259 out of 68,289 people as of Feb. 7, 2026 — detained for civil immigration violations like overstayed visas or pending asylum hearings. Despite Trump’s rhetoric about targeting the “worst of the worst,” the data reveals that this expansion to 92,600 beds will overwhelmingly confine people whose cases are administrative.
The scale of this investment raises a separate question: who benefits from building detention at this magnitude?
For years, ICE has relied heavily on private corporations, primarily CoreCivic and GEO Group, to detain immigrants under civil law. Nearly 90 percent of ICE detainees are held in facilities operated by for-profit contractors. These companies operate facilities through federal contracts and receive per diem payments tied to detention beds. Occupancy drives revenue.
Both companies donated $500,000 each to Trump’s campaign, supplemented by significant executive contributions. Expanded detention capacity directly increases the value of their federal contracts. Markets respond accordingly. The morning after Trump’s 2024 election, GEO Group stock surged 41 percent. CoreCivic jumped 29 percent. The return on investment materialized quickly: GEO Group reported 2025 revenue of $2.6 billion, an eight percent increase from 2024. CoreCivic reported $2.2 billion, up 12 percent.
Yet on quarterly earnings calls covered by The Appeal earlier this month, investors expressed frustration that detention numbers are not rising fast enough. One investor noted that detention levels were “below what investors thought it was going to be,” referencing expectations that ICE would reach 100,000 detainees rather than remaining near 70,000. Detention numbers are targets discussed in terms of capacity utilization rates. Both companies assured the investors that the numbers would rise. This $38.3 billion expenditure represents the mechanism to deliver exactly that.
The new memo appears, at first glance, to distance ICE from privatization by emphasizing “ICE-owned permanent structures.” Previously, many facilities were both owned and operated by private companies. Under this expansion, ICE will own much of the infrastructure itself. But the contracts call for “design, renovation, and operation” of these facilities. ICE may own the buildings, but private corporations become federally contracted operators of government property, guaranteed long-term contracts with no capital risk.
What this represents is the construction of permanent detention infrastructure designed to outlast any single administration. The memo explicitly states the objective is to help ICE “effectuate mass deportations” through facilities “built to handle the immediate surge capacity and sustained long-term operations.”
With detention embedded in federal infrastructure at this scale, it becomes financially and politically costly to dismantle. This permanence establishes a path dependency that can bind future administrations regardless of their priorities.
There is precedent for this dynamic. In 2009, Congress required ICE to maintain a minimum number of detention beds nightly. That bed quota created structural pressure to sustain arrests in order to justify the infrastructure investment. Expanding capacity to 92,600 beds nearly doubles the scale of that pressure. Once built, future administrations inherit these megafacilities and the institutional and financial momentum to keep them operational.
The question is whether we want to institutionalize mass civil detention as a standing feature of American governance, at a scale funded by nearly $40 billion and largely operated by corporations whose revenue directly depends on filled beds.
You can support immigration enforcement and still resist the logic of constructing detention infrastructure at this magnitude. When most detainees have no criminal convictions and long-term facilities are constructed to sustain high occupancy, the implications extend beyond administrative efficiency.
Infrastructure, once built, has a way of shaping policy long after the money is spent and the headlines fade.
The Zeitgeist aims to publish ideas worth discussing. The views presented are solely those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial board.
