Companies With No Prison Background Seek Share of Trump's $45B Migrant Detention Plan: Report

An internal planning road map obtained by The Washington Post and published on Friday revealed that the Trump administration plans to double immigration detention space by the end of this year, reaching more than 107,000 beds, including in mega-facilities, tents and at least two new family detention centers .

This expansion, funded by an unprecedented $45 billion detention budget approved last month by Congress, has attracted multiple companies with no prior experience in immigration detention, a new Bloomberg report has revealed. These companies include disaster-response firms, event logistics providers, and defense contractors

One of the companies featured in the sprawling report is Indiana-based USA Up Star LLC, previously focused on setting up tent camps after disasters. The company has no detention track record but has maintained regular contact with Border Czar Tom Homan while exploring a move into the field, according to people familiar with the talks. USA Up Star has not secured a contract, but it is one of more than 20 relatively small companies newly short-listed by ICE in May.

Other entrants include Gothams LLC and Recana Solutions LLC, both of which won large state contracts under Texas's Operation Lone Star to build migrant processing centers despite no prior immigration-related work. Those contracts generated millions in revenue and significant political donations to state officials. Florida's new Everglades camp—built in eight days—has already awarded more than $330 million in contracts to over a dozen companies, including Gothams, many drawn from emergency vendor lists.

Response AI Solutions LLC, a Virginia company offering medical and facility services "enhanced by AI," also landed on ICE's short list without detention history. Its chief growth officer previously worked at Universal.one, a firm tied to Homan through ethics disclosures, and collaborated with his Border911 advocacy group. Response AI bid unsuccessfully for the Fort Bliss, Texas, contract, submitting a proposal more than double the winning offer.

The aforementioned Fort Bliss contract—valued at $1.26 billion—went to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small defense contractor with no detention experience and no record of federal contracts of that magnitude. Most of that work will be performed by subcontractors, led by Disaster Management Group LLC (DMG) of Florida. DMG, which has disaster-response but not detention experience, is owned by Nate Albers, a Trump associate whose company was penalized by the Department of Labor in 2024 for underpaying workers on a military project.

As the report points out, private prison giants such as Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Inc. remain key ICE partners, yet the administration views temporary tent camps as a faster solution to overcrowding. Nevertheless, both of those names are reporting major revenue gains as of late, as The Guardian reported earlier this week. GEO Group posted $636.2 million in quarterly revenue, exceeding analyst expectations, while CoreCivic reported $538.2 million, up nearly 10% from last year.