Mass deportations are being planned by the U.S. government — and that could mean a big boom in business for private prisons.
As of March 9, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was holding 46,269 people people, according to the nonpartisan Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). This is the highest number of detainees since October 2019.
The Adams County detention center in Natchez, Mississippi, which held the largest number of ICE detainees so far in fiscal 2025, averaging 2,153 per day, is owned and operated by a publicly-traded company called CoreCivic (CXW).
The stock has soared 54.52% in the last six months.
The GEO Group (CXW), another operator of private prisons, has seen its shares double in value since Donald Trump’s election win.
Investors have poured money into these stocks since mass deportations will likely require an increase in immigration detention facilities.
In November, George Zoley, The GEO Group’s founder and executive chairman, told stakeholders in an earnings call that the company “was built for this unique moment.”
“ICE detention isn’t just a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s a business. These facilities are privately owned and run for profit,” wrote Jasmine Mooney, a Canadian citizen who was recently detained by U.S. authorities for two weeks. “It’s a lucrative business: CoreCivic made over $560 million from ICE contracts in a single year. In 2024, GEO Group made more than $763 million from ICE contracts.”
While for-profit private prison companies are reportedly set to make billions reopening jails for ICE, your retirement savings may be invested in and supporting these firms, whether you like it or not. Investors with moral and ethical concerns over benefiting from mass deportations may be unknowingly invested in these stocks through exchange-traded funds or mutual funds.
Here’s how to know your exposure and what you can do about it.
Both The GEO Group and CoreCivic plan to benefit from mass deportations.
In December, The GEO Group announced a $70 million investment to “deliver expanded detention capacity, secure transportation, and electronic monitoring services” to ICE. According to the press release, it’s currently the largest service provider to ICE, “providing approximately 21,000 detention beds (with a present census of 14,000) at 16 ICE Processing Centers with the ability to expand to a minimum of 32,000 beds at 23 facilities.”
