Baldwin Prison To Reopen As ICE Detention Center

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/21/2025) The GEO Group announced late Thursday that it was contracted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reopen its 1,800-bed North Lake Facility in Baldwin prison as an ICE detention center.

Within a few months, GEO and ICE expect to finalize a long-term contract that is expected to generate as much as $70 million in annual revenues in the first full year of operations. ICE would have exclusive use of the facility.

"We expect that our company-owned North Lake Facility in Michigan will play an important role in helping meet the need for increased federal immigration processing center bedspace," said GEO Chair George C. Zoley. "We are proud of our 40-year public-private partnership with ICE, and we stand ready to continue to help the federal government meet its expanded immigration enforcement priorities.”

The facility closed during the Biden administration as part of his move to end the federal government's association with private prisons.

With a capacity to detain 1,800 people, North Lake will become one of the largest ICE detention centers in the country. North Lake is among several shuttered BOP private prisons that have been converted into ICE detention centers over the years. This news is the latest development in Trump’s immigration detention expansion plan, which is attempting to triple the immigration detention system’s capacity.

North Lake was previously used by the BOP as a segregated immigrant-only prison. The reopening of the facility shines a light on a critical flaw of Biden’s 2021 executive order, which excluded the largest share of privately operated detention facilities in the federal system: ICE detention centers.

A 2023 report by Detention Watch Network and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center detailed how jails and prisons nationwide will close for one purpose, only to reopen and incarcerate a different group of people, creating a “Carceral Carousel.”

“GEO Group and other private contractors are teeming over Trump’s continued expansion of ICE detention and particularly at the prospect of cashing in on their vacant prisons, like North Lake, that were recently forced to shutter,” said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director of Detention Watch Network. “The perverse financial incentives are glaring as GEO Group stands to generate in excess of $70 million in annualized revenue from North Lake, at the expense of people’s lives and a small community that has been forced to rely on a carceral economy."