GEO Group To Open Major ICE Detention Center At Shuttered Prison
The prison has been shuttered since 2022. Prison leaders haven’t told local officials when North Lake will reopen, and neither prison owner GEOGroup nor ICE could be reached for comment on this story. It will likely be the second-largest ICEdetentioncenter in the country. Just last week, GeoGroup announced that ICE modified a contract for an existing detentioncenter in southeastern Georgia so that the company could reopen an idle prison on adjacent land to hold 1,868 migrants. The expansion of immigration detentionfacilities is a multibillion-dollar industry dominated by a handful of private corporations. In rural Lake county, Michigan, GeoGroup, another prison corporation, is reopening the closed North Lake correctional facility, which has capacity for 1,800 people and would be the largest immigration detentioncenter in the midwest, according to the local news site MLive.com. GEOGroup is a majorICE contractor that operates a network of immigration detentioncenters, including Delaney Hall in New Jersey, where reports of detainee mistreatment have led to days of protests. A new ICEdetentioncenter is set toopen in Hudson, Colorado, under a $39 million, six‑month contract awarded to GEOGroup, which already operates Aurora’s ICEfacility. The facility adds to Colorado’s detention capacity and has raised questions about transparency and oversight. That facility, previously an ICEdetentioncenter managed by the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, had closed in 2021 amid allegations of medical abuse against the women held there, according to a bipartisan Senate investigation. ICE is currently holding about 50,000 immigrants in facilities across the country, including local jails and private detentioncenters, an increase from the agency’s typical maximum capacity of about 42,000 at the beginning of the year.
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