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MASSIVE CORRUPTION EMERGES AS ICE OVERPAYS FOR WAREHOUSES
Right now, ICE is holding nearly 70,000 people in detention centers across the country and two of the biggest private detention companies, GEO Group and CoreCivic, are making enormous amounts of money from government contracts.
These detention contracts cost taxpayers between $130 and $200 per person, per day, which means that at $130 a day for 70,000 detainees, we’re talking about more than $9 MILLION EVERY SINGLE DAY, or $3 BILLION a year, just to keep people in cages.
But here’s where it gets insane…
Roughly 75% of the people ICE is holding haven’t even been convicted of a crime. That’s three out of every four people being held without a criminal conviction or a trial.
The contracts with both of these companies have something called minimum bed guarantees, which essentially means the government agrees to pay for a certain number of beds whether people are occupying them or not.
And by the government, I mean YOU, the American taxpayer.
So we’re paying private corporations to maintain detention capacity even when beds are empty, while ICE is simultaneously conducting immigration raids and expanding the number of people it can detain.
And this is where I think Americans need to start paying attention to the financial incentives behind these operations.
When the government commits billions of dollars to detention contracts, expands enforcement operations, and builds an enormous network of facilities designed to hold tens of thousands of additional people, the companies operating those facilities stand to make a fortune.
CoreCivic even acknowledged in its 2026 financial filings that increased immigration enforcement and detention occupancy were contributing to its growing revenue.
So how much of this massive expansion is actually about enforcing immigration laws and how much of this expansion is done to justify these enormous contracts being shelled out by the government so these private corporations can continue to get rich ?
And more importantly, what happens when the same corporations making billions from government contracts turn around and funnel millions of dollars into Super PACs supporting the politicians responsible for expanding ICE?
And the money doesn’t stop with the corporations operating these detention centers. ICE is also spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars purchasing warehouses across the country, with some property owners receiving tens of millions of dollars more than the properties’ earlier purchase prices or valuations.
Which raises another question: Who is making a fortune from these real estate deals and how much of that money is finding its way back into the pockets and political campaigns of the people responsible for approving them?
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Why is ICE massively overpaying for these detention centers all across the country? Who is pocketing these profits?
In Social Circle, Georgia, a town of 5,000 people ICE bought a warehouse from a company called PNK Group, owned by Andre Sharkov.
The company was originally incorporated in Russia and Sharkov bought this property less than 2 years ago for $29 million.
Why did ICE purchase this property for $128 million in 2026? That’s a $99 million dollar profit in under two years. And the sale closed in 4 days.
Federal property acquisition usually takes months. So here’s what I want to know: where did that extra $99 million go? Who benefitted from this deal? And why did it happen so fast?
And this isn’t an isolated case. This is happening all across the country
In Hamburg, Pennsylvania, ICE purchased a warehouse for $87 million and the seller had acquired it just 16 months earlier for $57 million. That’s a $30 million increase for a property they hardly owned for a year.
In Surprise, Arizona, ICE paid $70 million for a warehouse the county valued at $46 million dollars. That’s a 52% markup.
In Hagerstown, Maryland, ICE paid $102 million for a property that had been refinanced just 7 months earlier at $76 million. That’s a 33% percent markup.
And in Socorro, Texas, ICE paid $123 million for a warehouse that El Paso county appraised at $29 million dollars. That’s 323% markup. The government paid more than FOUR TIMES THE ASSESSED VALUE.
ICE has spent more than $690 million acquiring just seven warehouses and they’ve overpaid on every single one. And to make matters worse, if that’s possible, they’re just getting started.
ICE is planning to spend another $38 BILLION OF OUR MONEY turning warehouses and former prisons into detention centers. This is what happens when you hand a government agency $75 billion and allow it to spend enormous amounts of taxpayer money without adequate oversight or accountability.
Meanwhile, Americans are constantly being told there isn’t enough money for disaster relief, healthcare, or education, but somehow the federal government can spend hundreds of millions of dollars purchasing warehouses at questionable prices to hold thousands of people who haven’t even been convicted of a crime.
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WHO IS GETTING RICH FROM ICE’S EXPANSION?
We’re not just talking about private companies receiving billions of dollars from the federal government or making hundreds of millions off of property sales. We’re also talking about some of those same companies pouring millions of dollars into the political organizations supporting the politicians responsible for expanding ICE.
So while American taxpayers are footing the bill for this massive expansion, some of the companies benefiting financially are also helping fund the political organizations working to keep the people overseeing those contracts in power.
Take GEO Group, one of the largest private detention companies in the country.
According to Federal Election Commission records, a GEO Group subsidiary has contributed $5.4 MILLION to MAGA Inc., the Super PAC supporting Donald Trump, while its parent company continues receiving enormous government detention contracts.
So we have a private detention company receiving billions of dollars in government business while one of its subsidiaries is contributing millions to political organizations supporting the administration overseeing that business.
And it gets even more interesting when you start looking at the people running these agencies, because in June 2026, a former GEO Group executive, David Venturella, became the acting director of ICE.
The following month, ICE approved two major contracts with GEO Group worth a combined $165 million annually, while a GEO subsidiary contributed another $1.4 million to MAGA Inc. during July.
And what makes this entire situation so disturbing is that WE are the ones paying for all of it. We’re paying for the immigration raids, we’re paying private corporations billions of dollars to keep people locked up, and we’re paying hundreds of millions more for warehouses that the government is purchasing at questionable prices.
Meanwhile, the same companies collecting our tax dollars are turning around and contributing millions to political organizations supporting the very people responsible for handing out these contracts.
So while ordinary Americans are struggling to afford groceries, rent, healthcare, and just about everything else, we’re being forced to foot the bill for a system that is making corporations and investors extraordinarily wealthy.
And apparently, we’re supposed to believe that there’s never enough money for the things Americans actually need, but there’s always enough to hand out billions in government contracts to companies that help finance the politicians overseeing them.
I don’t know about you, but I’m getting pretty tired of watching our government take money out of our pockets, hand it to wealthy corporations, and then watching some of those same corporations turn around and use their money to help keep the politicians responsible for it in power.
And the worst part is that we have absolutely no say in any of it, even though we’re the ones paying for every single dollar.
Relevant reading:
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I keep my news, investigations, and analysis free and accessible to everyone. If you value my work, your support makes it possible for me to keep doing it. Please like, comment, share, and subscribe.
Sources & Credits: I’ve included headlines from the original news reports throughout this article so you can look into the information yourself. I also want to give credit to Jessica Craven on Instagram, whose video brought some of these details to my attention and helped inform my research.
Great work!
GEO Corp is one of the largest, if not the largest developer of hubs used as detention centers. GEO is owned by the Rockafeller family. Core Civic is another group of detention center hub development. Core Civic is owned by shareholders, primarily Bkackrock, Vanguard, State Street, Goldman Sachs...etc