A politically connected prison company that’s been the target of lawsuits and a federal investigation is now hiring staff to support President Donald Trump’s deportation campaign in the Chicago area.
Tennessee-based CoreCivic is benefiting from Trump’s aggressive immigration enforcement agenda and his reversal of an order under the Biden administration that barred the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service from contracting with private detention facilities, the company told investors earlier this year.
The publicly traded company — formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America — has posted online ads seeking administrative workers to support U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Chicago and at ICE’s Broadview facility, which is used to temporarily hold detained immigrants.
The Broadview center is where demonstrators recently have been hit with rubber bullets and pepper powder while protesting the Trump administration’s continued immigration “blitz.”
CoreCivic and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE, won’t say how many people the company is aiming to hire for the $37-an-hour positions.
CoreCivic operates 43 correctional and detention centers that have a total 65,000 beds. It also runs 21 so-called re-entry centers with another 10,000 beds.
The company, which is more than 40 years old, reported stellar financial results last month, with second-quarter revenue of more than $538 million — up about 10% from the same quarter last year.
“Increasing demand for the solutions we provide, particularly from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, contributed to a strong second quarter, as nationwide detention populations under ICE custody reached an all-time high,” said Damon T. Hininger, CoreCivic’s chief executive officer.
CoreCivic spokesman Brian Todd says the company “plays a limited but important role in America’s immigration system” and helps the government reduce costs.
DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin says ICE has “a longstanding relationship” with CoreCivic that has stretched through the Obama and Biden administrations. McLaughlin says the federal government wants to partner with Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, “to open the next state ICE facility — but he’d rather murderers, pedophiles, rapists, and gang members be loose on Illinois streets.”
Public enforcement, private contracts
CoreCivic is primed to cash in on the budget bill Trump signed in July that appropriated $75 billion for ICE, tripling the agency’s annual spending and making it the country’s biggest law enforcement agency.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen, senior director of the justice program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said in a report published Wednesday that private prison companies like CoreCivic have long been integral to immigration enforcement.
“It is critical to acknowledge that if these corporations didn’t exist it would be difficult for the federal government to execute its plans,” Eisen wrote in Just Security, a law and policy journal. “And when this giant infusion of funding for ICE ramps up the U.S. government capacity to detain, transport, and deport people, it will be difficult to dismantle even if future administrations seek to wind down this agenda.”
In a report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in May, CoreCivic noted the business opportunity provided by Trump’s “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order, which requires an increase in immigration enforcement in interior states like Illinois.
The company also pointed out that Trump signed a law that requires ICE to detain immigrants accused of burglary, theft, assault of a law enforcement officer, or killing or injuring another person. ICE has estimated the mandatory detention requirement of the law could require 60,000 to 110,000 additional detention beds, according to the company.
The job postings for “case processing specialist” positions in the Chicago area call for college-educated applicants who are bilingual and have at least one year of experience “in criminal justice, corrections or a related field.”
The administrative workers will obtain and compile detainees’ criminal records, process immigration cases, and help facilitate interviews, court hearings and deportations, according to the postings. That includes organizing and preparing removal documents and coordinating with ICE to schedule flights.
Todd says “CoreCivic does not enforce immigration laws, arrest anyone who may be in violation of immigration laws or have any say whatsoever in an individual’s deportation or release.”
Big campaign contributions
In its SEC filing, CoreCivic disclosed that a jury in April awarded almost $28 million to an inmate assaulted by another inmate at a company facility in Montana. The company said it planned to appeal.
CoreCivic also says it’s cooperating with a Justice Department civil rights investigation of conditions at a Tennessee correctional center the company owns and operates.
The company has paid $4.4 million to settle nearly 80 lawsuits and complaints involving accusations of mistreatment, including 22 inmate deaths, at four Tennessee prisons and two jails from 2016 through mid-2024, The Associated Press has reported, with Tennessee’s state corrections agency having fined the company more than $44 million.
Todd says CoreCivic has “worked closely with the Tennessee Department of Corrections to identify and implement policies and processes that enhance safety and security while providing meaningful programs and services geared towards helping the individuals in our care prepare for successful reentry.”
Separately, the city of Leavenworth, Kansas, is suing CoreCivic to prevent it from reopening a vacant jail to house more than 1,000 ICE detainees. That city’s attorneys have said the company had operated an overcrowded, violent “hell hole” in the jail. CoreCivic has filed a countersuit, saying Leavenworth is violating its right to carry out its contract with the Trump administration.
CoreCivic used the jail mostly to house federal detainees awaiting trial under a contract with the Marshals Service. Poor living conditions there were cited in a 2017 Justice Department inspector general’s audit. The facility has been empty since 2021 because of then-President Joe Biden’s executive order banning the use of private prisons by the Justice Department.
Todd says the company doesn’t “cut corners on care, staff or training, which meets, and in many cases exceeds, our government partners’ standards.”
McLaughlin says: “ICE has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens. All detainees are provided with proper meals, medical treatment and have opportunities to communicate with lawyers and their family members.”
CoreCivic’s political action committee, CoreCivic PAC, has spent more than $1.4 million since 2015, federal election records show.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee have been among the biggest recipients of the PAC’s political contributions over the past decade. CoreCivic also gave $500,000 to Trump’s inaugural committee in December, according to federal election records.
On an earnings call with investors last month, a CoreCivic executive spoke about how important the current Republican administration is to the company. The executive said the company is well-positioned to profit from the budget bill that Trump signed on July 4, giving ICE a flood of new funding.
“ICE launched a very aggressive nationwide hiring program for 10,000 employees,” said David Garfinkle, the company’s chief financial officer.
“This is very important for two reasons,” Garfinkle said. “One, it is another sign of the intensity of ICE behavior with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And, two, this increase in law enforcement personnel will obviously raise the level of individuals arrested and the requirement for detention capacity.”