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private prisons
In Gift to Private Prisons and Telecom Giants, Trump FCC Jacks Up Price of Inmate Phone Calls
The lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC called the new order "an egregious transfer of wealth from families in incredibly vulnerable situations to greedy monopoly companies that seek to squeeze every penny out of them."
Oct 29, 2025
The Federal Communications Commission, an agency controlled by appointees of US President Donald Trump, voted Tuesday to raise the maximum price for prison phone calls—a gift to telecom firms and private prison giants that profit from what critics have long described as predatory charges.
The agency's 2-1 vote rolled back a Biden-era cap on the price of prison phone calls, a limit that the FCC estimated would have collectively saved incarcerated people and their loved ones hundreds of millions of dollars a year. The Equal Justice Initiative noted earlier this year that "many families struggle with the high cost of phone calls and video visits, which are especially critical for people incarcerated far away from their families."
"Staying connected can cost families as much as $500 per month, and more than one in three families reported going into debt or going without food, medical care, and other basic needs to stay in touch with their loved ones," the group said.
The FCC, led by Trump loyalist Brendan Carr, also raised the possibility of revoking a Biden-era ban on telecom commission payments to jails and prisons. According to Bloomberg, the agency "reopened the topic for public comment on Tuesday."
Popular Information reported earlier this year that "the high cost of prison phone calls is a cash windfall for the private prison industry, which spent vast sums to help elect Trump president."
"The companies that provide prison telephone services offer kickbacks, known as 'commissions,' to prison operators to secure lucrative contracts," the outlet noted. "This means up to 50% of the money incarcerated people spend on telephone calls is routed back to the company or government that operates the prison. This system incentivizes prison operators to award contracts to companies that charge exorbitant fees, creating a larger pool of money for kickbacks."
Telecom companies that provide services to jails and prisons are also poised to benefit from the FCC's move. Bloomberg observed that the agency's Tuesday vote was "a boon for telecom providers such as ViaPath Technologies and Aventiv Technologies," both of which complained to the FCC that the Biden-era price cap would have devastated their businesses.
Anna Gomez, the lone Democratic commissioner on the FCC, condemned the agency's vote as "indefensible."
"It implements an egregious transfer of wealth from families in incredibly vulnerable situations to greedy monopoly companies that seek to squeeze every penny out of them," said Gomez, who voted against the price cap increase.
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Trump’s Immigration Policies Are Feeding the Private Prison Industrial Complex
The Trump administration leaves no doubt that it will detain as many undocumented immigrants as it can and send them to for-profit centers.
Sep 03, 2025
When it comes to for-profit, private corporate incarceration of immigrants, making lots of money is like drinking salt water: The more they drink, the thirstier they get. Roman proverbs say that the more money a rich man has, the more driven and addicted he becomes to accumulating even more money. Wealth addiction is at the root of giant private prison corporations’ domination of the US government as communities take a back seat to the need for private profit. Many government leaders from both political parties share the same “profits over people” ideology.
The industry is preparing for explosive growth. On recent earnings calls, CoreCivic executives announced plans to triple the number of beds in their facilities within a few months. That would mean an additional $1.5 billion in revenue for the corporation, more than doubling its annual earnings. The US private incarceration system is a deeply entrenched network of public-private partnerships that make billions from incarceration and detention every year.
Just like large. private health insurance corporations, the US private-profit incarceration system has the inherent tendency to invent new needs, disregard all boundaries, and turn everything into big profit. Limitless greed for money becomes a disease where a person may become oversaturated with food… but no one or private prison corporation ever has enough wealth. Wealth addiction is a greedy compulsion to obtain more and more wealth, and specifically obtain what belongs to others. The effect is to injure others because it is adversarial and harmful to society as a whole.
The private prison industry pushes for harsh immigration policies intended to drive up immigration detention. And private immigration detention centers suffer from many of the same problems as private prisons and jails, but the people held in them have even fewer rights and thus, at times, can suffer even more abuse.
What Is Private Immigration Detention?
Emerging from the Reagan administration’s advocacy of privatization of public services, immigration detention is now a booming business for private prison corporations. Today’s profiteering involves the complete outsourcing of the criminal legal system to the highest bidder. Corruption of money in politics allows greedy corporations to decimate families in disproportionately Black, brown, and Indigenous communities.
With burgeoning anti-immigrant rhetoric and legislative crackdowns at all levels, private prison corporations are increasing their hold on US detention policy. Today about 90% of detained immigrants are held in privately operated facilities, the highest percentage in US history. In a for-profit prison, jail, or immigrant detention facility, people are imprisoned by a private third party that contracts with a government agency. Contractual agreements between governments and private entities commit prisoners to privatized facilities and are paid a per diem or monthly rate, either for each immigrant or prisoner in the facility, or for each place available, whether occupied or not. Such contracts may be for the operation only of a facility, or for design, construction, and operation.
The Trump administration leaves no doubt that it will detain as many undocumented immigrants as it can and send them to for-profit centers. And to help make sure that happens, private prison companies spend millions on campaigns and congressional lobbying efforts, just like businesses that sell cars, real estate, hamburgers, or toothpaste.
Everyone interested should join all state and local efforts to end privatization. profiteering, and barbarous inappropriate imprisonment of immigrants.
Next to private health insurance corporations, there is no greater disconnect between the public good and private interests than the rise of corporate-owned and-operated for-profit jails. The interest of private jails lies not in the obvious social good of having the minimum necessary number of inmates, but instead having as many immigrants and prisoners as possible housed as cheaply and profitably as possible. In the push for austerity and privatization, private profit US prison corporations have become premier examples of private capitalist enterprises seeking profits from the misery of man while trying to ensure that nothing is done to decrease that misery.
Profiteering private prison corporations are cashing in on the misery and desperation of US citizens as many county jail and state prison systems privatize throughout the nation. Private companies house over 10% of the nation’s total prison population, with privatization and profiteering madness now extending to well over 6 million people under correctional supervision, more than ever were in Stalin’s gulags.
Very alarming, the private prison industry now incarcerates 90% of all immigrant children, adolescents, and adults. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Alonzo Pena, acknowledged that the private companies have all too often fallen short, noting that “it wasn’t their priority to ensure that the highest standards were being met.” ICE deserves some blame and responsibility: “We set up this partnership with the private industry in a way that was supposed to make things much more effective, much more economical, but unfortunately, it was in the execution and the monitoring and the auditing we fell behind, we fell short.”
How to Privatize a Jail
The standard method for privatization of jail:
- Defund government services to make sure things don’t work and people get angry;
- Hand program over to private capital;
- Continue to defund local publicly funded jail and state prison services;
- Urge and pressure county commissions and state government to allow for-profit, private prison corporations to take over under the guise of “rescuing” jail functions; and
- Promote the “appearance of rescue” of the county jail or state service by self-serving private profit driven programs to the community.
In reality it’s not long until privatization falls short in quality service; the private jail program saves money by employing fewer, less-trained guards and other workers and pays them badly, with horror stories often accompanying how these jails are run. In addition to Department of Justice (DOJ) studies and experience showing that governments save little money, if any, by turning over prison functions to private outfits, the DOJ also concluded that private prisons were in general more violent than government-operated institutions, and ordered a phaseout under the Obama and Biden administrations of their use at the federal level. Regrettably, reversing that order was one of the first things that President Donald Trump did on taking office.
Claims of Private Prison Corporations
Without evidence, private prison corporations always claim that their program will save the county and state millions annually. Private companies, such as CoreCivic and GEO Group, tout their virtues by saying they build and operate prisons more cheaply than governments can, due to the public sector’s many mandates. Their day-to-day operations are similarly more efficient and less costly, they assert, and they do it all without compromising public safety. The bottom line, they say, is that they allow governments to free up public funds for pursuits that mean more to most taxpayers than how felons or immigrants are jailed. To make sure that happens, private prison companies spend millions on donations to politicians from both political parties at all levels of government, campaigns, and congressional lobbying efforts, just like businesses that sell cars, real estate, or hamburgers.
“Privately operated facilities are better equipped to handle changes in the flow of illegal immigration because they can open or close new facilities as needed,” said Rodney E. King, CoreCivic’s public affairs manager. Critics tell a different story. They cite moments like a 2015 riot to protest poor conditions at a prison in Arizona run by another major private player, Management and Training Corporation. Earlier at that same institution, three inmates had escaped and murdered two people.
Many case examples show scrimping by private immigrant detention facility operators, with bad food and shabby healthcare for inmates, low pay and inadequate training for guards, and hiring shortages. At immigrant detention centers, operators see little need to offer extensive educational programs for children or job training since people held there are mostly destined for deportation. Basic hygiene items like toothpaste or tampons are marked up by 300% or more by Commissary corporations. Contributing to suffering and preventable deaths, some private healthcare providers routinely delay or deny treament behind bars. Private food vendors serve meals that are frequently expired or nutritionally inadequate, all in the name of cutting costs and maximizing returns. “To maximize profit, you minimize your expenditures,” said Rachel Steinback, a lawyer for hunger strikers.
US DOJ Concludes No Cost Savings
Despite many promises that jail and prison privatization will lead to big cost savings, such savings, as a comprehensive study by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, part of the US Department of Justice, concluded, “have simply not materialized.” To the extent that private prison and jail operators do manage to save money, they do so through “reductions in trained staff, fringe benefits, and other labor-related costs.” Economist Paul Krugman noted that “as more and more government functions get privatized, states become ‘pay-to-play’ paradises in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become quid pro quo for getting government busines.”
Conclusion
The corrupt nexus of privatization and patronage by private 1% corporations and oligarchs is undermining local and state levels of government across the USA. Longer-term institutionalization by for-profit corporations is promoted via harsh sentencing guidelines and other means for keeping inmates doing lengthy, and very profitable for the corporation, sentences. To fix this problem, we should demand that private corporations be removed from the administration of our local, state, and federal public prison programs. Privatization of jail services increases costs without any corresponding increase in quality or care. Until then, the powerful in county, state, and federal government, along with their corporate oligarch partners to whom they are beholden, will continue privatizing and profiteering as they please, while laughing all the way to the bank. Everyone interested should join all state and local efforts to end privatization. profiteering, and barbarous inappropriate imprisonment of immigrants.
In the new book, The Prison Industry: How it Works and Who Profits, authors Bianca Tylek and Worth Rises write:
Private prisons have embedded themselves in every facet of the criminal and immigration systems. While people have begun to challenge private prison corporations, there must be vigilant attention paid to the industry’s attempt to change its toxic image and expand into adjacent business lines. After all, whether walls are built out of concrete, wire, or WiFi, a prison is still a prison, and a private prison still needs more bodies to grow. No matter their form, private prison corporations have no place in any system that claims to be about justice.
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'Dystopian' Trump Plan for Massive Expansion of ICE Detention Centers Exposed
"This expansion is a disastrous waste of billions of taxpayer dollars that will only line the coffers of the private prison industry," said one ACLU attorney.
Apr 11, 2025
The ACLU on Friday revealed new details about the Trump administration's plans to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers in 10 states across the nation, with private prison corporations—whose share prices soared after the election of President Donald Trump—seeking to run at least a half dozen proposed ICE facilities.
The documents, obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request, "signal a massive expansion of ICE detention capacity—including at facilities notorious for misconduct and abuse—which echo reports earlier this week that the Trump administration has sought proposals for up to $45 billion to expand immigrant detention," ACLU said.
"The discovery also comes on the heels of a 'strategic sourcing vehicle' released by ICE earlier this month, which called for government contractors to submit proposals for immigration detention and related services," the group added.
The more than 250 pages of documents obtained by the ACLU "include information regarding facility capacity, history of facility use, available local transport, proximity to local hospitals, immigration courts, and transport, as well as access to local consulates and pro bono legal services."
"Specifically, the documents reveal that Geo Group, Inc. (GEO) and CoreCivic submitted proposals for a variety of facilities not currently in use by ICE," ACLU said.
These include:
- McFarland Detention Center in McFarland, California;
- California City Correctional Center in California City, California;
- North Lake Correctional Center in Baldwin, Michigan;
- Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth, Kansas;
- Lea County Detention Center in Hobbs, New Mexico; and
- South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
GEO, CoreCivic, and Management Training Corporation (MTC) "also sought to renew contracts at current ICE detention facilities" in California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington, according to the files.
"The documents received provide important details regarding what we have long feared—a massive expansion of ICE detention facilities nationwide in an effort to further the Trump administration's dystopian plans to deport our immigrant neighbors and loved ones," said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project.
"This expansion is a disastrous waste of billions of taxpayer dollars that will only line the coffers of the private prison industry," Cho added.
Indeed, GEO shares have nearly doubled in value since Trump's election, while CoreCivic stock is up 57% over the same period.
Unlike state prisons or country and local jails, which are accountable to oversight agencies, privately operated ICE detention centers are not subject to state regulation or inspection. And although Department of Homeland Security detainees are not convicted criminals and ICE detention centers are not technically prisons, the facilities are plagued by a history of abuse, often sexual in nature, and sometimes deadly.
During Trump's first term, groups including the ACLU sounded the alarm on the record number of detainee deaths in ICE custody, and scandals—including the separation of children from their parents or guardians and forced sterilization of numerous women at an ICE facility in Georgia—sparked widespread outrage and calls for reform from immigrant rights defenders.
However, abuses continued into the administration of former President Joe Biden, including "medical neglect, preventable deaths, punitive use of solitary confinement, lack of due process, obstructed access to legal counsel, and discriminatory and racist treatment," according to a 2024 report published by the National Immigrant Justice Center. Biden also broke a campaign promise to stop holding federal prisoners and immigration detainees in private prisons.
Since Trump took office in January after being elected on a promise to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history, fresh reports of ICE detainee abuse and poor detention conditions have been reported. These include
alleged denial of medical care, insufficient access to feminine hygiene products, and rotten food at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, Louisiana, where Tufts University Ph.D. student and Palestine defender Rümeysa Öztürk is being held without charge.
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