President Trump’s second term has been marked by an intense focus on immigration enforcement. The administration has transformed large parts of the federal government into a machine for mass deportations, scaling up the detention of immigrants as it aims to ultimately deport 1 million people annually.
But with immigration detention capacity in the U.S. already limited, the administration has had to turn to the use of military bases and private industry to attempt to fulfill its anti-immigrant ambitions. Such methods not only present potential conflicts of interest for administration officials who have ties to private prisons, with taxpayer dollars lining the pockets of executives at companies like GEO Group and CoreCivic; insufficient oversight and training among detention center staff as well as the prioritization of profit over people opens the door for mistreatment and worsening conditions in facilities that have long been criticized for overcrowding and abuse.
To increase capacity, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan has said the administration was working to reduce the number of required federal inspections and to lower detention standards so that more county sheriffs could detain people on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The call to lower facility standards is especially troubling considering the systemic issues of abuse and negligence already prevalent in immigration detention. The report “Deadly Failures: Preventable Deaths in U.S. Immigration Detention,” published by American Oversight, the ACLU, and Physicians for Human Rights, found that 95 percent of deaths in ICE custody were preventable or possibly preventable if appropriate medical care had been provided; in many cases, deaths occurred at facilities that did not have an appropriate level of medical staffing.
As the second Trump administration seeks to detain more people, poor conditions will likely worsen. Within the first week of Trump’s second term, ICE was directed to arrest 1,200 to 1,500 people daily. Within three weeks, ICE had already reached 109% capacity at detention facilities; shortly after, the administration announced plans to triple ICE’s detention capacity to detain an additional 84,000 people.
Early on, the Trump administration also announced plans to detain a broader range of people, including families, a policy that was first introduced under President Obama but discontinued under President Biden. In March 2025, the Trump administration announced plans to reopen facilities to detain families with children together. In practice, however, this policy typically excludes fathers and presents another form of family separation. Detention has been shown to result in significant long-term emotional, physical, and mental trauma for children, with children often kept in family detention for longer than the legal limit.
Faced with limited capacity to meet its goals of record detention highs, the Trump administration has pursued extreme measures. Just nine days after returning to the White House, Trump signed an executive order calling for 30,000 people to be held at the Guantánamo Bay military prison to provide additional capacity for ICE. Guantánamo Bay is remote, providing limited access to attorneys or family members, and detainees are supervised by members of the military, who have been trained to guard people accused of war crimes rather than civil crimes. Akima, the company contracted to run the migrant operations center for ICE at Guantánamo Bay, has a history of abuse and civil rights complaints, including excessive use of force. The immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay have reportedly faced intimidation and mistreatment, including physical abuse, strip searches, and solitary confinement, leading to hunger strikes and suicide attempts.
Trump has since announced plans to expand the detention of immigrants to other military bases, building a nationwide network of facilities that includes a “deportation hub” in Fort Bliss, Texas, intended to hold up to 10,000 people. The growing role of the Department of Defense in immigration enforcement raises concerns about potential rights abuses, as officials may not be properly trained and military facilities have a history of poor conditions.
Private companies stand to gain the most from this increase in detainment. According to a request for proposals posted in April 2025, ICE plans to spend as much as $45 billion over two years on immigration detention. Damon Hininger, the CEO of private prison company CoreCivic, said during a February 2025 earnings call: “I’ve worked at CoreCivic for 32 years, and this is truly one of the most exciting periods of my career. We anticipate significant growth opportunities, perhaps the most significant growth in our company’s history over the next several years.”
Private prisons have been found to perpetuate significant abuses against inmates, as companies are motivated to cut costs associated with care and turn detention into profit. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said of mass deportation efforts, “We need to get better at treating this like a business, like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”
American Oversight is investigating the implementation of the Trump administration’s deportation efforts and the consequences of its dehumanizing prioritization of mass detention over providing humane conditions.
- Guantánamo Bay Detention: After the Trump administration began using the U.S. military base in Guantánamo Bay to detain migrants, we sent requests to the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, and Justice for communications, directives and guidance, training materials, talking points, staffing proposals, cost records, and agreements.
- 287(g) Programs: As President Trump’s mass deportation plans heavily rely on local law enforcement, we have sent requests to ICE and sheriffs in Arizona, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Texas for records, including communications and training materials, related to 287(g) programs, which allow local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE to enforce federal immigration laws, including through detainment.
- Private Prison Contracts: In response to the Trump administration expanding contracts with private prison companies to increase immigration detention capacity, we requested communications with and about private prison contractors and records regarding plans to renovate or update existing facilities.
- ICE ATD Policies: ICE has announced plans to expand Alternatives to Detention (ATD) programs, which uses electronic monitoring technologies such as GPS to surveil people outside of detention facilities. We sent requests to ICE for records related to current and changing ATD policies, as well as communications containing key terms about ATD programs.
- ICE ATD Request for Information: In November 2024, ICE published a request for information (RFI) asking companies to submit plans for how they would expand ATD programs. We sent requests to the agency for responses submitted to the RFI and records reflecting the contents of any related industry briefings, meetings, or calls.
- DHS Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman RIF: The Trump administration recently dismantled DHS’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, and the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman. These offices were responsible for providing oversight of various aspects of immigration work at DHS, with the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman particularly focusing on investigating abuse in detention facilities. In response, we sent requests to DHS, ICE, and Customs and Border Protection for records on the shutdowns and their impact.
- Legal Service Provider Detention Facility Access: Legal service providers have shared that funding freezes have also prevented them from accessing clients detained by ICE. We sent requests to the Justice Department and ICE seeking directives, communications, and complaints regarding legal service providers’ access to detention facilities.
- Detention No-Release Policies: Immigrant advocates have heard reports from intelligence officials that there is a “no-release” policy in place for Uzbekistan and adjacent countries, where Uzbek nationals are systematically denied release even after their credible fear screening. We asked DHS, ICE, and CBP for all “no-release” policies and related communications.
- Louisiana Contracts with ICE and CBP: We sent requests for contracts and communications regarding the reported use of a warehouse in New Orleans for immigration enforcement and detention, which raised questions about whether the contracting process was transparent and proper.
- ICE County Detention Records: We sent requests to county detention facilities in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin for complaints filed by detainees, information about the number of ICE detainees who have sought medical treatment, and information about how facilities handle such records requests.
