Few provisions in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act were as thrilling to immigration hard-liners as the $45 billion it provided to supersize the ICE detention system. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had long complained that a lack of jail space constrained their ability to deport more people. The bill gave ICE enough money to nearly triple its detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds—a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” the White House called it.
But in the three months since the bill was signed, the agency has added little to that capacity. The lack of beds may be limiting ICE’s ability to expand its enforcement; the number of arrests it’s made peaked in June and has declined in the months since. The agency’s focus on partnerships with state governments has done little to add capacity, despite driving up costs. And overcrowding has worsened in short-term holding cells at ICE processing centers, where detainees, attorneys, and immigrant advocates report abysmal conditions.
Lawmakers who visited the Baltimore center in August said detainees were spending as long as eight days in bare-bones cells designed for 12-hour stays. In Georgia, Virginia, and California, attorneys say immigrants have been forced to sleep on concrete floors without showers or bedding for days. Last month, a district court judge in New York City ordered immediate improvements to the processing center at a federal building in Lower Manhattan, where secretly recorded videos showed packed holding cells and men sleeping beside toilets.
The lack of detention space has slowed Trump’s immigration crackdown at a moment when it was primed to accelerate. From January to June, the average number of detainees per day in ICE custody rose 43 percent, to more than 57,000. But since July, when the funding was approved, the detainee population has increased only about 5 percent, to roughly 60,000, the latest statistics show.
The stream of social-media clips showing masked federal agents kicking down doors, raiding Home Depot parking lots, and pulling people from their car have kept up the appearance of an ever-expanding campaign. ICE’s own data show that the agency’s buildup stalled over the summer.
Eight current and former officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security told me that they blame Corey Lewandowski, the longtime Trump-world figure who is a “special government employee” at DHS and functions as the unofficial chief of staff to Secretary Kristi Noem. Lewandowski has operated as a gatekeeper for Noem, especially since June, when the department implemented a new policy requiring her to sign off on any contract exceeding $100,000.
With 260,000 employees and an annual budget of $62 billion, DHS has thousands of contracts in that range—including things like Coast Guard vessels, Border Patrol equipment, and TSA software—and deals with private-prison companies that have facilities with tens of thousands of beds that they say could be operational within weeks. Ever since Trump was elected, companies like the Geo Group and CoreCivic have been quickly expanding and promising their investors fat profits.
DHS’s new contracting rules have produced “chaos,” according to the current and former officials I spoke with, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or feared reprisals from the administration. Most of them support the president and his mass-deportation plan, but told me they were dismayed that ICE seemed to be losing altitude right after securing the funding they’d always dreamed of.
“There’s extreme frustration that the president’s agenda—when it comes to ICE beds, and therefore deportations—is not going to happen,” one former DHS official told me. “The White House worked for months to get the reconciliation bill over the finish line. Why did you just lobby Congress for months saying you needed the money if you don’t intend to spend it?”
There’s a jarring disconnect between what I’ve been hearing from supporters of the president who are disappointed with ICE’s pace, and the images on social media each day: sobbing families torn apart in courthouse hallways; a commando-style night raid on a Chicago apartment building; and masked federal officers smashing car windows, slamming people to the ground, and targeting bystanders who dare to question them. The Trump administration has made a show of force by sending National Guard troops to reinforce ICE teams in Los Angeles; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago. But a closer look at ICE data shows that the intensity of ICE enforcement nationwide has essentially leveled off.
In May, Stephen Miller and Noem told ICE’s top leaders that they should be making 3,000 arrests a day nationwide to meet the president’s goal of 1 million deportations a year. ICE data show that the number of immigrants arrested by ICE per month peaked at 31,590 in June, but that, since then, arrests have been down about 11 percent.
ICE deported about 350,000 people during the 2025 fiscal year, which ended September 30—the highest mark in a decade, but well below Trump’s goal.
In an interview, Lewandowski acknowledged that ICE’s numbers had flattened out this summer. But he said he and other Noem advisers have spent the past few months focused on cost-saving measures that required hardball negotiations with detention contractors. “I understand that the private companies, who have made an incredibly good living off the backs of the U.S. taxpayers for a long time, are not happy,” Lewandowski told me.
He insisted the approach is working. “We are asking all vendors to provide the best value,” he said. “They’ve all come back and said, ‘You know what? We can do better. We can do better because we understand.’”
Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, told me in an email that his company has maintained “an open line of communication” with DHS and ICE officials as they “explore all options available to them to address the increasing demand for detention services and capacity.” The company announced two new ICE contracts last week, Gustin noted, for a 2,560-bed detention center in California’s Kern County, and a 1,033-bed facility in Leavenworth, Kansas. The company, whose stock price has doubled since September 2023, told investors that it expects $200 million in combined annual revenue from the sites.
Alexandra Wilkes, a spokesperson for a trade-industry group that represents private detention companies, said in an email that Geo and others “have a long-standing record of providing private sector solutions to the federal government that are priced to be fair and reasonable while providing value for the American taxpayer.”
Some of the former officials who expressed to me frustration with Lewandowski and the slowdown are former ICE officials with ties to the for-profit detention companies that have ready-to-open facilities they’re eager to fill. CoreCivic told investors in August that it has about 30,000 beds available for ICE, and Geo said it has roughly 10,000.
But Noem and Lewandowski have prioritized agreements with Republican governors offering detention space at state-run prisons. In addition to the Florida-run facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” ICE has announced additional sites and come up with other cartoonish names for them: the “Cornhusker Clink” (Nebraska), “Speedway Slammer” (Indiana), “Deportation Depot” (Florida), and “Louisiana Lockup,” the latter in an abandoned wing of the notorious Angola prison.
Those contracts have provided the agency relatively few beds—several hundred here and there—in contrast with the privately run facilities with capacity for thousands of detainees. “Why are they signing these contracts with these governors for small potatoes?” one frustrated official grumbled to me.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for DHS, told me that Noem sought deals with state governors and others because the for-profit detention companies are trying to “take advantage” of the government.
“Secretary Noem isn’t going to let the American taxpayer get ripped off,” McLaughlin wrote in an email. Noem, she said, “found innovative, cost-effective solutions” through deals with states that provide more flexibility “so that we aren’t locked into decades-long contracts when bed space need is eventually slowed.” McLaughlin claimed that these efforts have saved taxpayers more than $12 billion.
Former officials I spoke with disputed those claims, noting that ICE has long had the ability to terminate contracts when it no longer needs detention space. Two officials critical of Lewandowski said they thought the partnerships with states were a play to boost Noem’s profile among GOP leaders as a potential vice-presidential pick for 2028.
“I want to see the administration succeed,” a senior administration official told me, “and we can’t succeed if we’re playing all these fucking games.”
Lewandowski called those claims “absurd,” and told me that Noem “already knows all those governors,” from her time as governor of South Dakota.
DHS last year said its average daily cost was $165 per ICE detainee. The contracts that ICE signed with private companies for new detention sites this spring appear to be roughly in the same cost range. Delaney Hall, a 1,000-bed facility run by the Geo Group in Newark, is projected to cost ICE about $165 per detainee per day, records show. The company’s North Lake detention center, which opened in June in a remote county in Michigan, costs about $130 a day. A Tennessee facility run by CoreCivic that opened last month is about $160 a day.
Those rates are significantly lower than the amounts DHS appears to be paying through its most recent contracts at state-run facilities. The commissioner of the Indiana Department of Corrections told state lawmakers last month that DHS will pay $291 a day at the “Speedway Slammer,” while guaranteeing that the facility has a minimum of 450 detainees. The average cost of a bed inside the tents at “Alligator Alcatraz” is $245 a day, records show.
DHS has not released the details of its contract with the Louisiana Department of Corrections, but two ICE officials told me its rates were even steeper. Lewandowski said those costs reflected a need for a higher level of security. “The price per person may be higher, but the people who are being housed in Angola are the worst of the worst,” he told me.
DHS did not provide a comparison of the rates it’s paying the states versus the private companies.
Several top DHS officials have deep ties to Louisiana, and Lewandowski was hired as a consultant for Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry’s 2023 campaign. Lewandowski told me he has disclosed all of his financial assets to the department and recused himself from any discussions that raise a potential conflict of interest. He said he plans to remain an adviser at DHS as long as Noem and Trump want him. Lewandowski’s critics in the administration often cite rumors of an extramarital affair between him and Noem. “It’s bullshit,” he said. “I don’t know why you would raise the issue. It’s sexist. It’s a low blow to someone who has achieved incredible success on her own.”
The for-profit detention companies that receive federal contracts from ICE have long been criticized by liberal groups and many Democratic lawmakers. When President Joe Biden took office, he ordered the Department of Justice to end its use of the private firms, though the directive excluded immigration detention. Over the years, the Geo Group, CoreCivic, and others have filled their executive ranks with retired ICE officials who maintain close ties to the agency and senior DHS leaders.
ICE officials I’ve spoken with have often told me they prefer working with for-profit companies over state-run facilities. The private companies tend to be more flexible and less bureaucratic, they say, treating ICE like a customer rather than another government agency. If ICE officials need to make sudden changes to detention capacity or services, for example, the private companies are usually more responsive, as long as ICE keeps cutting checks.
By law, immigration detention is administrative and not intended to be punitive. But the Trump administration has been trying to encourage more immigrants to self-deport to avoid the grim conditions in ICE detention. Trump has also appeared to delight in making ICE facilities as intimidating as possible, but his plans for a prison camp for 30,000 ICE detainees at the Guantánamo Bay Navy Base have been on hold, along with his threats to send thousands of detainees to a megaprison in El Salvador.
MSNBC reported last month that the Trump border czar Tom Homan accepted a $50,000 cash payment in 2024 from FBI agents pretending to be businessmen interested in detention contracts. Homan, who started a consulting business after retiring from a career at ICE, has not denied taking the money but told Fox News that he didn’t do anything illegal. The White House has backed him, calling the FBI investigation—shut down by Trump officials—a politically motivated scheme to “entrap” Homan.
Three former ICE officials I spoke with said Homan has been frustrated with Noem and Lewandowski over the contracting slowdown, but he has mostly remained on the sidelines because his past consulting work has created so many potential conflicts.
Lewandowski told me the ICE detention network is now poised to resume its rapid expansion, and he pointed to ICE data showing that deportations have nearly tripled since January. Top ICE officials spent the past several months consumed by a more pressing White House mandate to recruit, hire, train, and deploy 10,000 new ICE officers by the end of the year, he said. The agency has received 175,000 applications so far, Lewandowski said, and has overhauled ICE-academy courses to cut training times roughly in half. The new hires will help relieve officers who have been working overtime. “We have put an enormous strain on our workforce,” Lewandowski said. “Now we’re seeing some reinforcements.”
The Trump administration implemented a new policy on July 8 that restricts the ability of immigration judges to release ICE detainees on bond while they’re fighting deportation, another strain on ICE capacity. DHS officials have turned to the Pentagon for help setting up “soft-sided” ICE jails to hold detainees in giant tents. This summer the Department of Defense, which the administration now calls the Department of War, signed a deal for a 5,000-bed tent site at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, awarding a $1.26 billion contract to a company with no website and whose business address is the owner’s modest home in suburban Richmond, Virginia. The Washington Post, citing an unpublished copy of an internal report by ICE inspectors, reported last month that the site, known as Camp East Montana, accumulated 60 violations during its first 50 days of operations, including failures to monitor detainees’ medical conditions, insufficient access to legal counsel, inadequate recreation space, and broken toilets. DHS denounced the Post story as “false” and “fearmongering clickbait.”
Seventeen detainees died in ICE custody during the 2025 fiscal year, up from 12 the year before, agency data show. Most of the deaths were linked to medical emergencies, according to ICE records, but at least three detainees took their own life. The agency says it provides comprehensive medical care to all detainees. Immigrant advocates and attorneys dispute that.
As the pace of detentions has outstripped the opening of new facilities, the problems have rippled through the system. In August, ICE detainees in Georgia reported 20-hour daily lockdowns, verbally abusive guards, soiled mattresses, and “inhumane” conditions. Some of the grimmest accounts are from the holding cells in ICE field offices, designed for stays of 12 hours or less, but where immigrants have been staying for days on end—awaiting transfer to an ICE detention center—without soap, showers, clean clothes, and other basics. The cells keep their lights on 24 hours a day, and detainees typically receive little more than a silvery plastic blanket to keep them warm.
In a September 17 ruling in New York, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered ICE to take immediate steps to improve access to meals, basic hygiene products, mattress pads, and other supplies at the cramped holding cells in Lower Manhattan.
“ICE has forced these detainees into facilities that are too small to accommodate the numbers, that never were intended to hold people overnight, that are unequipped to feed them properly, and that, more broadly, are not capable of housing the detainees in a humane manner,” Kaplan wrote.
One former ICE official I spoke with said he expected multiple lawsuits in the coming months over conditions at overcrowded processing centers. “And they will have legitimate lawsuits,” the official told me. “Everyone inside ICE knows they’ll be right.”
The post Trump’s ICE Crackdown Stalled This Summer appeared first on The Atlantic.
